The lunar flight program for 2028-2029 will be unmanned, but putting a man on the moon is scheduled for 2029-2030, the head of Russia's space agency said Tuesday.

"We need to begin working now to do this," Roscosmos head Igor Komarov said.

Komarov added that Roscosmos is already developing all of the preliminary stages for the lunar flight program.

The agency aims to become a world leader in space exploration in 2015, specifically with regard to Mars and Moon missions, Komarov said as cited by press service for the United Rocket and Space Corporation, a state-run joint stock company under Roscosmos.

It quoted other objectives that the Russian space industry has decided to pursue this year, including more involvement in international space projects to send missions to planets in the Solar system.

The Russian space program has an ambitious agenda. In September 2014, Roscosmos said it was planning to launch a full-scale moon exploration program in 2016-2025 and gave the green light to a project to build a super-heavy rocket that is needed to send spacecraft beyond Earth's orbit.

Source: Sputnik News