Russia built a new space airport

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin yesterday announced that the country will spend more than $ 800 million to build a space airport in the Far East.

Russian Soyuz spacecraft.After the US shuttle fleet retired, Soyuz will be the only means of transporting people and goods to the International Space Station.Photo: BBC.

BBC said the new space airport will be built near the city of Uglegorsk in the Amur region, near the border with China. The airport will help Russia reduce its dependence on Baikonur - the Soviet-era aerospace airport - in Kazakhstan. It is scheduled to start operations in 2015 and will serve civilian flights.

"The government decided to spend 24.7 billion rubles (US $ 809 million) over the next three years to build a space airport named Vostochny," BBC quoted Putin as saying. In Russian Vostochny means "east".

Anatoly Perminov, director of the Russian Space Agency, said 30,000 experts will participate in the construction of the new space airport. It will be smaller than the center of Baikonur. Currently Russia has to pay rent for Baikonur space center to Kazakhstan government. This is the largest and oldest cosmopolitan airport in the world.

Vostochny space airport will be located on a land area of ​​about 700 km ² and owns many new launchers, a high-tech zone for people working in airports and many research rooms.

Engineers will begin installing launchers and building test sites in the Vostochny space airport next year. The main item of the project will be implemented in 2012.

Russia also plans to build a new generation of spacecraft to make interplanetary flights. The first goal of the new generation of ships is Mars.