Putin pledges over $1billion to ensure new cosmodrome is ready for 2015 launches

(Vladimir Putin, Dmitry Rogozin and Oleg Ostapenko visit the construction site at Vostochny Cosmodrome – Photo Credit: Alexei Druzhinin/Reuters/RIA Novosti/Kremlin)

Russian President Vladimir Putin has pledged an extra 50 billion rubles ($1.3 billion) to Roscosmos to ensure that the new Vostochny spaceport in Russia’s Far East, intended to reduce the space agency’s reliance on the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, would be ready to launch new-generation Soyuz-2 rockets by 2015 and Angara vehicles, currently in development, by 2020.

Images of the Day: 3/7/14

(Baikonur, Kazakhstan – Photo Credit: Oleg Artemyev/Roscosmos) 

Russian cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev has been taking a series of photographs of Russian cities from the International Space Station.