Russia Seeking To Keep Kazakh Space Site Until 2044

LAUNCH PAD

Russia Seeking To Keep Kazakh Cosmodrome Until 2044

ruins of a bygone empire

The inside view of the collapsed part of the building in Baikonur cosmodrome 13 May 2002. Russian emergency services have discovered the bodies of three of the space station workers killed 12 May when the 70-meter roof at one of cosmodrome's hangars collapsed while they were carrying out repairs. Eight people are thought to have died in the accident.
AFP/POOL Photo

Moscow (AFP) Oct 02, 2002
Russia is negotiating with Kazakhstan to continue to use that country's Baikonur cosmodrome as a satellite launch site through to 2044, Russia's space agency said on Wednesday.

Nearly three-quarters of all Russian satellites and more than half of its military satellites are launched from Baikonur, which became part of a foreign country when the Soviet Union split up.

The Russian defence ministry had earlier announced plans to transfer all launches to the Plesetsk cosmodrome, under development in Russia's far north, from 2005 onwards.

But a senior space official said last Spring it was unlikely Russia would manage to transfer its military satellite launches to its own territory during this decade, mainly for cost reasons.

"We are also developing Plesetsk," the head of Russia's space agency, Yuri Koptev, told reporters at a space congress in Moscow on Wednesday.

South African 'space tourist' Mark Shuttleworth's Taxi heads out to the pad April 23, 2002 AFP/EPA Photo by Anatoly Maltsev
"But to meet our needs and fulfil our obligations to international space programs, we will need to use both cosmodromes," he said.

Russia and Kazakhstan signed a 1994 agreement recognising the Central Asian republic's territorial claim on Baikonur, but leasing the cosmodrome, which was built in the Soviet Union in the 1950's, to Moscow for 115 million dollars (euros) a year.

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SPACEMART

Kazakhstan To Extend Baikonur Lease 10 Years
Baikonur (Interfax) Nov. 16, 2000
Kazakhstan is prepared to extend Russia's lease on the Baikonur cosmodrome for another ten years, Kazakh Prime Minister Kasymzhomart Tokayev announced at a news briefing at Baikonur on Thursday.

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