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alokmohan
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The leaders of veteran allies Russia and India agreed Monday to launch a joint unmanned mission to the moon during Kremlin talks on boosting military and trade tie<br /> <br />Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced the plan after talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin during which the two discussed projects for a more than twofold increase in trade by the end of the decade.<br /><br />"The symbol of our cooperation is the joint agreement to send an unpiloted space ship to the moon for scientific investigation," Singh said in comments broadcast on Russian state television after the meeting.<br /><br />Russia's space agency Roskosmos said it had signed an agreement with the Indian space agency for joint lunar exploration through 2017, including the construction of a module that will orbit the moon "for peaceful purposes."<br /><br />"Russia and India will jointly build a space ship. Under the project we plan to send an entire laboratory to the moon," Roskosmos head Anatoly Perminov said in a statement.<br /><br />During the talks the Russian and Indian leaders also "paid particular attention to cooperation in nuclear energy and in military-technical cooperation," Putin said.<br /><br />