Tim Furniss/LONDON
RUSSIAN PRESIDENT Boris Yeltsin has signed a decree approving a new satellite-launch centre at the former military garrison, Svobodny-18, in the Amur region in the far east of the country, close to the Chinese border (Flight International, 14-20 February).
The centre, to be operated by Russia's Military Space Forces, will be the second operational launch site in Russia, after the Plesetsk Cosmodrome. Russia's other launch site, at Baikonur, is rented from Kazakhstan for $115 million per-year.
The first launches from Svobodny could take place later this year, using existing military silos for decommissioned SS-11 intercontinental ballistic missiles. The silos will be converted to launch SS-19-based Rokot satellite launchers.
The Rokot can carry 1,850kg into low-Earth orbit (LEO). The booster, marketed commercially by Khrunichev and Daimler-Benz Aerospace, under the name of Eurorocket, has made only one orbital launch.
By 2000, after an estimated $600 million investment, there will be five pads for Rokot and Start boosters, and two for the new Angara heavy-lift launcher.
Four- and five-stage versions of the Start, which are marketed commercially by the Russian Komplex company, can carry between 500kg and 700kg into LEO, but the fleet has only one success and one failure in two attempts.
The Angara, which will be able to place 26t into LEO - or 4.5t directly into geostationary transfer orbit - will be powered by former Energia engines, with the Rokot's Breeze upper stage or the KVD cryogenic engine.
Source: Flight International
