The Chang’e 6 landing region on the south pole of the Moon (ChinaSpaceFan/ CC BY-SA 4.0)

Russia and China are planning five missions to the Moon to place modules on its surface and in orbit around it, Turkey’s Anadolu news agency reports, citing a statement by the Russian government.

The missions will support a plan to build an automated research base on the Moon’s south pole.

It will study and explore the Moon, verify space exploration technology, and put astronauts on the surface.

Other countries and agencies have been invited to participate in the construction of the station.

So far, the China National Space Administration (CNSA) has signed cooperation agreements with more than 10 countries and international organisations.

In June, China’s Chang’e-6 mission returned to Earth after collecting a little less than 2kg of soil and rocks from the far side of the Moon.

The Chang’e-7 mission, scheduled for 2026, will survey the south pole and Chang’e-8 will be launched in 2028 to carry out experiments on using lunar resources.

If the project is found to be achievable, the aim is to build it by 2035.

The project has been under discussion for a number of years. In April 2021, the CNSA and Roscosmos signed a memorandum of understanding to build a research station.

The idea was to build the station at the south pole to take advantage of any ice that may be present, and to staff it with robots and autonomous machines, which may be joined by humans at a later date.

A further agreement was signed in November 2022, and this came into force on 18 July.

Meanwhile, the US is working on its Artemis program to build a base camp and install a space station in lunar orbit.

The first phase, an unscrewed flight test, was carried out in November 2022. The second will take four astronauts into space to “demonstrate a broad range of capabilities needed on deep space missions”. This is scheduled for some time after September 2025.

Artemis III will put astronauts on the surface of the south pole, and will take place some time after September 2026.