Russia hopes to join NASA's moon exploration programme with technology and know how, a Russian space agency spokesman said yesterday.

Igor Panarin said Russia was conducting talks with NASA and voiced hope that a deal could be reached within months.

"We want the agreement to reflect Russia's status as a great space power," he said, adding that Russia plans to contribute technology rather than money to NASA's project.

NASA said on Monday that it would send a four-astronaut crew to the moon in 2020 and set up an international base camp on one of the moon's poles that would be permanently staffed by 2024.

Panarin said the agreement with NASA could be modelled on Russia's deal with the European Space Agency (ESA), which envisages launches of commercial satellites by Russian Soyuz rockets from France's Kourou launch pad in French Guyana starting in 2008. Under that deal, Russia would provide booster rockets and the ESA would fund launch pad upgrades.

"We could use a similar approach in the moon project," Panarin said.

Last year, NASA said it would cost US$104 billion just to get back to the moon for its first trip, but NASA officials declined on Monday to estimate the larger costs of a permanent lunar programme.

Russia's state-controlled RKK Energiya has proposed its own moon exploration programme that envisages setting up a permanent base on the moon, but the ambitious plan hasn't received government backing.

The Soviet Union sent numerous unmanned missions to explore the moon, including two rovers that studied the moon's surface in 1970-73. However, it lost the moon race to the United States, which sent Neil Armstrong on his moonwalk in 1969 while the Soviet programme collapsed in a series of booster explosions.

Russia recently has agreed to help China, which is aiming to land a robot probe on the moon by 2010.

Panarin said Russia could cooperate with both the United States and China in lunar research, dismissing allegations of a possible rivalry. "Space research is a vast field with plenty of room for every nation," he said.

Shuttle Discovery to blast off

NASA on Thursday evening local time will attempt to launch its third space shuttle mission in six months, a healthy pace the agency needs to maintain to finish work on the International Space Station before the shuttles stop flying in four years.

On the last flight, astronauts delivered new solar arrays to provide power for additional modules scheduled to be installed next year. The tricky task of wiring the arrays into the station's power grid falls to the crew of shuttle Discovery, which is scheduled for launch at 9:36 pm EST (0236 GMT today), weather permitting.

It is not a sexy mission. The only visual change in the outpost will be the addition of a small spacer segment to the station's exterior truss. But if all goes well, NASA likely will have put its biggest construction hurdle behind it.

At least 14 more missions are needed to finish the US$100 billion outpost.