New Delhi: A three-day workshop will allow school students here to photograph a range of fascinating features on the earth's surface, courtesy a NASA sponsored education programme, an NGO said Monday. 

The three-hour workshops - under the project International Space Station (ISS) EarthKAM - will begin Tuesday at the Indraprastha World School. The project is being coordinated by NGO Science Popularisation Association of Communicators and Educators (SPACE).

"Participants will be able to control a digital camera - the same serviced by astronaut Sunita Williams on her last mission - mounted on the ISS the processed images will then be available for viewing and studying," said a statement. 

"Teachers can use these images for the development of the curriculum plans for studies in subjects like physics, oceanography, climate, geography, Earth science etc.," it added. 

The workshop will give the students an opportunity to view large scale geographical features of the earth, weather and climate and also to study the areas affected by natural disasters such as floods, earthquakes, fires etc. 

Through this project they also learn about the mission and science of ISS, and about the life of astronauts on board ISS, said the statement.

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Russia will resume a long-dormant quest to explore the moon by sending an unmanned probe there in 2015, the head of the space agency was quoted as saying on Tuesday.

The craft, called Luna-Glob, or Moon-Globe, will be carried by the first rocket to blast off from a new facility that Russia is building in its far eastern Amur region, Roskosmos director Vladimir Popovkin said, according to the Interfax news agency.

"We will begin our exploration of the moon from there," he said of the new space centre that will decrease Russia's reliance of the Baikonur Cosmodrome in the ex-Soviet nation Kazakhstan, which it leases.

Russian space officials have said Luna-Glob would consist of an orbital module and a probe that would land on the moon and beam back information about samples it takes from the surface.

The Soviet Union got a jump on the United States in the Cold War space race, sending a probe to the moon in 1959 and putting the first person into space in 1961. But the United States first put a man on the moon in 1969 and Russia has not done so.

The last successful Soviet launch of a unmanned probe to the moon was in the 1970s, and Russia has suffered setbacks in its space program in recent years, including bungled satellite launches and the failure of a Mars probe in 2011.

A successful rocket launch on Tuesday put three military satellites in orbit, the Defense Ministry said.

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev approved a plan last month to spend 2.1 trillion roubles ($70 billion) on space industry development in 2013-2020, to pursue projects to explore the moon and Mars, among other things.

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London: A YouTube user, who certainly seems to think it's a possibility that 2013 is the year we finally make contact with our brothers from beyond the stars, has uploaded a video showing footage of at least one mysterious object zipping about over the surface of the moon. 

One of the "craft" in the video uploaded by user danchek2013 emerges from the shadowy landscape of the moon's surface and then seemingly accelerates over the craters. 

It then changes direction at breakneck speed towards the bottom of the screen, English daily reported. 

Intriguingly, it appears to leave vapour trails, similar to a plane, in its wake. 

Viewers have divided opinion over weather the "craft" is a faraway bird, dust mote, shooting star or an advanced civilization that has travelled from another galaxy to observe our planet. 

Commentor Aaliyah Martinez believes the speed of the turns bunks the idea that the vessel is of human origin. 

Some, however, are a little more sceptical. 

Deepcut66 called the video "hilarious", saying that it could so easily be CGI (computer generated imagery) and that they're just little smudges. 

David Peck was a little more scathing and said that the videos are stupid. 

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