According to RIA Novosti, European specialists may develop navigation and collision avoidance systems for Russian landing probe “Luna-Resource”, – Thomas Reiter ESA manned programs director reported.
“Last year we started negotiating the possibilities of cooperation in Moon exploration field with Russian colleagues from Roscosmos and TSNIIMASH. Now we have reached a consensus as some technologies developed for European landing device may be interesting in terms of our cooperation with Russia in the framework of “Luna-Resource” mission, planned, as far as I know, for 2017”, – Reiter said.
Earlier ESA specialists were developing their own Lunar Lander landing probe, planned to be launched in 2018. But ESA member-countries meeting at ministerial level decided to stop the project in November 2012. In 2015 Russia plans to send to the Moon probe “Luna-Glob-1” demonstrational landing designed to develop the landing platform in a year – “Luna-Glob-2” orbital device and in 2017 – “Luna-Resource” heavy landing device with a wide range of scientific equipment onboard. As was reported the Europeans will provide drilling device for that.
According to Reiter the Europeans may provide “Resource” with navigation systems developed by them before.
“We may cooperate with Russia in the field of optical navigation system and collision avoidance system, and we are really very interested in that”, – Reiter said.
