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Kazakh Site to Remain Crucial for Space Launches - Russian Agency Chief

Posted on: Monday, 15 November 2004, 12:00 CST

Text of report in English by Russian news agency Interfax-AVN web site

Moscow, 15 November: The Baykonur space centre [in Kazakhstan] will remain the major site for launching Russian spacecraft in the near future, the head of the Federal Space Agency [Roskosmos], Anatoliy Perminov, [has] said.

"On the whole, the Baykonur space centre is one of the world's leading centres as far as its workload is concerned. And it will remain the major space centre for Russia. We are working on providing it with commercial projects," Perminov said during a web briefing posted on the official web site of the Federal Space Agency.

According to him, Russian businessmen are for the first time investing their money in the commercial launch of the modified Zenit rocket from Baykonur. "We will be able to develop a launching system capable of launching both two- and three-stage Zenit carrier rockets," Perminov said.

He noted that at a certain time Zenit was expected to have been employed for launching manned spacecraft into space. "We may return to this problem later on. We are conducting negotiations with Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus on establishing a space corporation," Perminov said.

In addition to that, according to him, within the framework of the Bayterek project, the Baykonur space centre will launch Angara heavy carrier rockets, to be launched from the Plesetsk space centre in the future.

According to Perminov, the Plesetsk space centre has to have a heavy carrier rocket launching system to become a full-fledged space centre, i.e., a capability to launch Angara heavy carrier rockets capable of taking payloads to geostationary orbits.

At the moment the Plesetsk space centre is only capable of launching light carrier rockets such as Rokot and Kosmos, as well as medium Soyuz rockets. "At the moment the priority for the Plesetsk space centre is to complete construction of the Angara launch system, which is 50 per cent ready. Russia has to have a capability of launching heavy rockets both from Baykonur and [from] its own territory," Perminov said.

He also noted that the layout of the Angara rocket had been adopted, while oxidant and fuel tanks had already been manufactured. The booster and the cruising-engine are being tested. According to Perminov, it is technically possible to employ the Plesetsk space centre for launching manned spacecraft. "It is technically possible, and we have already discussed a similar project. At the present time there is no necessity in realizing such a project," he said.

Source: BBC Monitoring Former Soviet Union

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