Article Posted on : - Aug 11, 2011

An unrelated photo of a cosmodrome. Photo by Roscosmos.

MOSCOW (BNS): The Russian Government will allocate $8.4 billion for the construction of Vostochny space centre in Far East, according to a top official of Roscosmos.

The Russian space agency Chief Vladimir Popovkin told the Kommersant daily that ground infrastructure as well as technical and launch complexes are currently being designed for construction of the new space centre in the Amur Region.

The space centre will have two launch pads, a training centre and oxygen and hydrogen generation plants, he added.

The construction work was scheduled to begin this year and complete by 2016. The first rocket launch was expected to take place in 2015 and the first manned flight in 2018, a Ria Novosti report said.

Russia presently uses the Baikonur launch site in Kazakhstan which it has leased since the end of the Soviet Union and Plesetsk in northwest Russia.