Russia could contribute to the operation of the lunar base joint project with China by creating a nuclear energy source, Russian state space corporation Roscosmos head Yuri Borisov said on Monday.
"It is even more important to create a compact, reliable, long-term and long-lasting source of nuclear energy on the Moon. And this may be one of the serious contributions of the Russian side to the joint Russian-Chinese project," Borisov said at a lecture for students at the Tsiolkovsky State Museum of the History of Cosmonautics in Russia's Kaluga.
Borisov added that Roscosmos and NASA are holding negotiations on creating unified docking modules to assist each other in space after cooperation on the International Space Station (ISS) ends.
Russia and the United States have no major joint projects planned for post-2030 cooperation of the same scale as the ISS, Borisov said.
"In the security interests, we [Russia and the US] are negotiating the creation of unified docking modules, as the life of a cosmonaut in the orbit is the most important thing. In case of emergency or unpredictable [situations], to be able to dock by Russian ships or American ships, there is nothing to share here, we need to save people. I think we will continue cooperation in this direction," the head of Roscosmos noted.