The Russian orbital spaceship, Luna-Globe, will search for water and iron on the Moon, researcher Maxim Litvak said at a conference at the Russian Academy of Sciences Space Research Institute.

"We will install a gamma-spectrometer on the spaceship, not only a neutron spectrometer, and it will search for other elements alongside water. We want to find hydrogen-line elements, and other elements like iron, for instance," he said.

The presence of ice on Earth was proven in a mission of the LRO American lunar vehicle, which used the Russian-made device Lend for this purpose.

The content of hydrogen exceeds 5% in the soil inside some lunar craters. "It is frozen water mixed with regolith," Litvak said.

He said that under the projects in the making in Russia, the descent modules Luna-Glob and Luna-Resurs will land on the Moon's polar areas and start searching for water. The missions are scheduled for 2015-2016.