The Lunar Orbital Station (russian: Лунная Орбитальная Станция, Lunnaya Orbital'naya Stantsiya; LOS) is a proposed

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eig ...

n space station in orbit around the

Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth (comparable to the width of ...

. The design was presented in 2007 at a conference at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City. It is one of the two parts of the planned Russian lunar infrastructure, the other part being a base on the surface of the Moon. LOS would have six docking ports, a high-power antenna for

communications Communication (from la, communicare, meaning "to share" or "to be in relation with") is usually defined as the transmission of information. The term may also refer to the message communicated through such transmissions or the field of inquir ...

, maneuvering and

attitude control Attitude control is the process of controlling the orientation of an aerospace vehicle with respect to an inertial frame of reference or another entity such as the celestial sphere, certain fields, and nearby objects, etc. Controlling vehicle ...

engines, solar panels and a

robotic arm A robotic arm is a type of mechanical arm, usually programmable, with similar functions to a human arm; the arm may be the sum total of the mechanism or may be part of a more complex robot. The links of such a manipulator are connected by join ...

. The station components would be launched atop a super heavy version of the Angara rocket. Russia has expressed discontent with its role in the international

Lunar Gateway The Lunar Gateway, or simply Gateway, is the first planned extraterrestrial space station in lunar orbit intended to serve as a solar-powered communication hub, science laboratory, and short-term habitation module for government-agency astr ...

, which prompted the country to go ahead with the planning of its own lunar station. The launch of the first LOS module is proposed for 2025. Other reports state that NASA now accepted Russia's full participation in the international Gateway. In October 2020,

Dmitry Rogozin Dmitry Olegovich Rogozin (russian: link=no, Дми́трий Оле́гович Рого́зин; born 21 December 1963) is a Russian politician who served as director general of Roscosmos from 2018 to July 2022. He previously served as deputy ...

, director general of Roscosmos, said that the Lunar Gateway program is too “U.S.-centric” for Roscosmos to participate in. In January 2021, Roscosmos announced that it will not participate in the program.

References

External links

Lunar Orbital Station, LOS
Proposed space stations Exploration of the Moon Space program of Russia 2030s in science {{Moon-stub