Part of a long-term project to send humans to Mars, the Nasa-led programme will see the two countries working to create a crewed spaceport in lunar orbit 
 
 Russia and US will cooperate to build moon's first space station 
 
 Russia and the United States have agreed to cooperate on a Nasa-led programme to build the first lunar space station, part of a long-term project to send humans to Mars. 
 
 The US space agency said earlier this year that it was exploring a programme called the Deep Space Gateway, a multi-stage project to push further into the solar system. 
 
 The project envisages building a crew-tended spaceport in lunar orbit that would serve as a “gateway to deep space and the lunar surface,” Nasa has said. 
 
 
 
 Nasa has been far from coy in its ambitions to send humans to orbit Mars by the 2030s, and subsequent plans to colonise of the red planet. But plans to return to the moon have waxed and waned with the US administration. 
 
 
 
 While George W Bush was keen to see humans on the moon again by 2020, Barack Obama ditched the plan and focused on plans to visit Mars, including a mission to test the necessary technology by capturing a boulder from the surface of an asteroid and bringing it into lunar orbit. 
 
 
 
 Now, it seems, it’s all change again. With the Trump administration, asteroid missions have fallen from favour: with a spaceport orbiting the moon, crewed visits to the lunar surface are once again on the menu. 
 
 Trump has grand plan for mission to Mars but Nasa advises: cool your jets Read more 
 
 On Wednesday the Russian space agency Roscosmos announced that a cooperation agreement had been signed at an astronautical congress in Adelaide. 
 
 “The partners intend to develop international technical standards which will be used later, in particular to create a space station in lunar orbit,” the Russian agency said in a statement. 
 
 The Russians and Americans would cooperate to build the systems needed to organise scientific missions in lunar orbit and to the surface of the moon, the agency added. 
 
 “Roscosmos and Nasa have already agreed on standards for a docking unit of the future station. Taking into account the country’s extensive experience in developing docking units, the station’s future elements will be created using Russian designs.” 
 
 Moon wetter than previously thought, raising new manned mission possibilities Read more 
 
 Igor Komarov, Roscosmos’s general director, said no fewer than five countries were building their own rockets and systems. 
 
 “To avoid future problems over technical cooperation, part of the standards should be unified – for a possibility for various countries to work on their craft and dock to the international lunar station,” Komarov was quoted as saying in the statement. 
 
 Russia and the United States also discussed using Moscow’s Proton-M and Angara rockets to help create the infrastructure of the lunar spaceport, the statement said, adding that the main works were scheduled to begin in the mid-2020s. 
 
 Space exploration – including joint work on the International Space Station (ISS) – is one of the few areas where international cooperation between Russia and the US has not been marred by tensions over Ukraine and Syria. 
 
 The $100bn ISS, which has been orbiting Earth at about 17,000mph per hour since 1998, is the world’s largest space project. 
 
 ||||| Roscosmos' statement also outlines a rough plan to create a set of international technical standards for the lunar space station and beyond. Specifically, both docking ports and life support systems will be based on Russian design; after all, they have a lot more experience running a space station and the current life support systems aboard the ISS are in the Russian section, Zvezda. 
 
 Right now, the ISS has different ports for the multiple vehicles that dock with it. The Russian Soyuz capsule uses a different style docking port than the Space Shuttle did -- the Americans had to install adapters to convert Shuttle docking ports and allow private craft like SpaceX's Dragon to connect with them. Collaboration from the ground up, rather than making our own plans and partnering with the Russians at the last minute (like we did with the International Space Station), means that we can establish, collaborate on and coordinate technical specifications, making things easier in the medium and long term. 
 
 NASA's relying on its much-delayed heavy lift rocket, the SLS, to build the Deep Space Gateway, but they're only planning on launching it once a year. That timeline didn't seem feasible, and now Roscosmos's statement sheds some light: Russia's rockets will help out with the construction. Both agencies, as well as other ISS partners, are tasking their countries' respective industry partners with creating concept studies of what the Gateway might look like. 
 
 This is a big deal for many reasons; working together, despite political tensions, means that our countries are less likely to descend into outright hostilities. Additionally, NASA's aims have been somewhat unclear for a long time. They laid out ambitious goals without a clear plan on how they were going to achieve them, and without the budget to support them. Since then, the organization has slowly been scaling back. But now, with international agreements of cooperation, it looks like the Deep Space Gateway will happen. And because it's we have international partners, Congress will be less likely to cancel the project; after all, that's how the International Space Station scraped by with just one vote. ||||| Despite rising tensions between Russia and the United States here on Earth, the two nations continue to successfully collaborate on shared goals in space, from the International Space Station to Venus exploration. 
 
 Now, NASA and the Russian space agency Roscosmos will join forces on an ambitious mission called the Deep Space Gateway (DSG), an American-led plan to put a human-accessible space station in cislunar, or near-Moon, orbit. 
 
 On Wednesday, representatives of NASA and Roscosmos at the 68th International Astronautical Congress in Adelaide, Australia, signed an agreement to work together on the orbital Moon base. 
 
 Designed to dock with NASA's next-generation Orion spacecraft, the DSG would support a crew of four astronauts, making it an invaluable pit stop for human and robotic exploration of the lunar surface. The gateway would also be a staging point for deep space missions to Mars, Venus, or other distant locations. The station's modules are currently scheduled to be built in the 2020s. 
 
 While the finer details of the new agreement still need to be hashed out, including the total estimated cost and projected launch date, the plan at this time is for Roscosmos to develop standardized docking and life support systems for the lunar outpost, and perhaps provide carrier rocket assistance. 
 
 Concept art of Orion spacecraft (right) visiting Deep Space Gateway (left). Image: NASA 
 
 "NASA is pleased to see growing international interest in moving into cislunar space as the next step for advancing human space exploration," Robert Lightfoot, NASA's acting administrator, said in a NASA statement. "Statements such as this one signed with Roscosmos show the gateway concept as an enabler to the kind of exploration architecture that is affordable and sustainable." 
 
 Read More: Russia and America Are Collaborating on the Most Ambitious Venus Mission Ever 
 
 "The agreements reached open new prospects for international cooperation and expand the opportunities for using the capabilities of the Russian space industry," Roscosmos general director Igor Komarov said in a Roscosmos statement. 
 
 The United States, Russia, China, the European Union, and other space powers have expressed interest in developing inhabited Moon villages. Given that The Martian author Andy Weir set his new novel Artemis (which just got a movie deal) in a multicultural lunar town, it seems like the idea of human settlements on the Moon is back in vogue after decades of hibernation. 
 
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– Two words: Moon base. AFP reports the US and Russia will work together on a NASA program to build the Deep Space Gateway, a space station in orbit around the moon. NASA and Russia's Roscosmos signed an agreement to cooperate on the station—which will be "an invaluable pit stop for human and robotic exploration of the lunar surface" and "a staging point for deep space missions" to Mars and Venus—on Wednesday at the 68th International Astronautical Congress in Australia, according to Motherboard. While the Deep Space Gateway program is being led by NASA, Roscosmos will contribute docking ports and life support systems, and Russian rockets will be used to help with construction, Engadget reports. NASA wants to start work on the Deep Space Gateway, which will be crewed by four astronauts, in the mid-2020s. It's one step toward its goal of sending humans to Mars by the 2030s. In statements, Roscosmos and NASA say they share a "common vision for human exploration." The Deep Space Gateway agreement is important for a number of reasons. It clarifies NASA's goals and how it will achieve them after years of funding issues. It also makes it less likely Congress will put the kibosh on the Deep Space Gateway at some point. Finally, the agreement will be one more thing keeping the US and Russia from—as Engadget puts it—descending "into outright hostilities." Space is so far one of the few places where tensions between the two countries haven't risen recently. (China has some big lunar ambitions, too.)