Declining oil prices, Western sanctions and currency depreciation makes the Russian government revise the budget for its space agency Roscosmos.

It will suffer from severely reduced government funding for this reason. According to the newspaper Izvestia, it is reported that Roscosmos was proposing to cut the manned-flight segment of lunar exploration by 88.5 billion rubles ($1.22 billion) to 329.67 billion rubles but to build a spaceship that will fly to the moon would not suffer seriously.

According to a statement from Roscosmos, they decline to comment on those figures particularly, but they are saying that the revised program is still extensive.

“The revised project of the federal space program for 2016-25 envisages the study of the moon by automated orbiters, as well as by building up scientific and technical potential for further studies, including by manned missions,”

In April last year, the Russian government said that the country is planning to build a base on the moon as a research platform for further exploration.

Roscosmos declined to say whether the Moon base plans were still alive, but said the first manned flight around the Moon would not take place before 2029.

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Roscosmos 10-Year Budget Cut For Third Time
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