Moon: Russia Plans Unmanned Mission In 2015

A rocket booster would deliver a half-ton space exploration vehicle with equipment to look for water and take soil samples.

Russia has said it plans to send an unmanned spacecraft to the moon in 2015 from a new launch pad in the far east of the country.

The rocket booster would deliver a half-ton space exploration vehicle with scientific equipment that would search for water and take soil samples.

The head of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, Vladimir Popovkin, said the moon-bound spacecraft would be launched from its new Vostochny cosmodrome.

President Vladimir Putin has vowed to invest $1bn (£620m) in building the launch pad in the Amur Region not far from the Chinese border.

The last Soviet unmanned landing on the moon was in August 1976, when the Proton Booster collected soil and took it back to earth, as part of the Luna-24 mission.

Last July, China said it intended to land an exploratory craft on the moon for the first time in 2013, with the eventual aim of putting a man on the lunar surface.

That feat has so far only been achieved by the United States, most recently in 1972 - although Beijing did not give a time frame for when it plans to get a man on the moon.

China has spent about 39 billion yuan (£3.9bn) on its manned space programme since it began 20 years ago.