VOSTOCHNY COSMODROME, Amur region. Dec 16 (Interfax) - Roscosmos is planning to partially compensate for the costs of its lunar program by delivering commercial cargo to the Moon, state corporation head Dmitry Rogozin said at a press conference at the Vostochny Cosmodrome on Monday.
"We are planning to create a unilateral lunar landing module which will transport our payloads and those of other countries. It will be a universal elevator for transporting partners' payloads from the station in the lunar orbit," Rogozin said.
"The project could be commercialized, which is important for compensating for the hefty investment in its implementation," he said.
Rogozin said on Monday that Russia might skip the launch of two modules to the International Space Station and to use them as prototypes of modules for a station to be deployed in the lunar orbit.
He said earlier that Russia was planning to accomplish a manned landing on the Moon by 2030, and to perform a manned flight to the Moon in 2029.
According to Energia Corporation General Designer Yevgeny Mikrin, the first Russian manned landing on the Moon is expected to happen in the early 2030s. He also said it was planned to start building a lunar base at the end of the 2020s. The roadmap presented by Mikrin indicates that the first expedition would last for two weeks.