According to him, the current generation will see the first long-term missions, when people, with certain infrastructure, will find themselves on the Moon and perhaps on other celestial bodies.
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Backup place for humanity
D. Bakanov views the Moon not only as a scientific object but also as a backup place for humanity in case of natural or man-made disasters on Earth. “There must always be a backup option where humanity could ‘relocate’. And that will not be possible without space. The first stage is the Moon,” said D. Bakanov.
In Russia, in 2024, the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) prepared a Moon program planned until 2060. It includes a series of missions to study Earth’s satellite.
Putin is offered a nuclear power plant on the Moon
In the summer of 2025, Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov promised President Vladimir Putin that Russia plans to be the first in the world to build a nuclear power plant on the Moon. It should appear by 2036 and supply energy to the infrastructure.
To study Mars after 2030, the launch of the interplanetary station “Bumerang” is being considered, designed to collect soil from Mars’ satellite Phobos. After 2036, deeper studies of Venus and Mars are planned, as well as launching transport with nuclear power plants into space.
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Russia’s Moon program has been facing serious difficulties for many years – failures and postponements. In 2023, the first space mission to the Moon in half a century suffered a fiasco: the “Luna-25” station crashed on the lunar surface while attempting to land. In April 2026, Sergey Chernyshov, Vice President of the Russian Academy of Sciences, announced that the launch of the next mission to the Moon has been postponed from 2027 to 2028, and several other missions have been delayed.
SpaceX owner Elon Musk stated at the beginning of the year that his company will fully focus on creating settlements on the Moon in the near future, and will postpone the Mars program.
SpaceX has already focused on building a self-developing city on the Moon, as we could potentially do that in less than 10 years, while Mars would take more than 20 years,” E. Musk wrote on platform “X”.
