Russian deputy PM proposes Moon station

A top Russian official on Tuesday proposed setting up a space station on the Moon to revive Moscow's struggling space programme, a day after the prime minister ripped into its failures.

Outspoken recently-appointed deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin, who is a former envoy to NATO, suggested the plan in an interview to Vesti FM radio station, saying that Russia's space agency should focus on a single goal.

"I would suggest that we work on solving one large task. Such a task could become the creation, let's say, of a Moon station, a Moon base," said Rogozin.

"Why not try to work in the conditions of microgravity? Why not try to do a big station that would be on a natural satellite of Earth?" he suggested, adding it could be "a base for further jumps and hops, a kind of hub."

He spoke a day after Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev lashed out at the space industry, which has seen a series of humiliating failures, including losing 10 satellites in one and a half years and the crash of a Progress cargo ship last year.