The head of NASA, Bill Nelson, announced on Friday, May 28, about participation in the virtual format in the international space conference GLEX-2021, which will be held in June in St. Petersburg.
"As for the fact that I plan to attend the conference in St. Petersburg-yes, I plan to do it virtually," Nelson said at a briefing on Friday.
He added that he will participate in one of the panel discussions of the upcoming conference.
On May 25, Roscosmos CEO Dmitry Rogozin on Twitter invited the new head of NASA to Russia to discuss cooperation in space. During the briefing, Nelson did not answer whether his decision was related to the invitation of the Russian space agency.
Earlier, on May 27, it became known about the joint presentation of Russia and China of the roadmap for the creation of an International Scientific Lunar Station (MNLS) at the global conference on space exploration GLEX in St. Petersburg in June this year.
On April 23, CNSA announced the implementation of a large-scale cooperation with Roscosmos to create an international research base on the Moon, CNSA head Wu Yanhua said in his speech at the Chinese-Russian presentation of the joint project in Nanjing.
In October 2021, Russia plans to send an automatic station "Luna-25" to the Moon, the device will be the first domestic device in modern Russia on a natural satellite of the Earth. The main start date is October 1, and the backup date is October 30.
The Global Space Exploration Conference was originally scheduled to be held in St. Petersburg on June 9-11, 2020, but due to the pandemic, it was postponed to this year. The Forum is held annually in different countries. This year it will be held in St. Petersburg from June 14 to 18.
