Russia to send man to the Moon

Russia has revealed that it will send a man to the moon by 2030, a tardy 60 years after Neil Armstrong’s Apollo mission ended the US-Soviet space race.

According to a leaked strategy document from Russia’s space agency, Roskosmos: conduct a demonstrative manned circumlunar test flight with the subsequent landing of cosmonauts on [the Moon’s] surface and their return to Earth”

It's so crazy it might just work. And did on July 20, 1969.

Plans to send cosmonauts to the Moon may help revive Russia’s space programme. A series of satellites crashed last year and in January the Mars probe, Fobos Grunt (Harry Potter name, surely), fell to Earth after a faulty launch two months earlier.

Yury Karash, a member of the Russian Academy of Cosmonautics, seemed unimpressed. He told The Telegraph: "It is hard to find a better way to hurt Russian prestige and emphasise Russian technological backwardness than by sending cosmonauts to the Moon around 2030, 60 years after Apollo." He suggested that resources would be better spent on a manned flight to Mars.