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.

NASA confirms Space Launch System will be ready for 2018 test flight

(Space Launch System will become the most powerful rocket ever built for deep space missions – Photo Credit: NASA/MSFC)

After a thorough review, NASA managers have formally approved the development of the Space Launch System, something no other exploration class vehicle has achieved since the agency built the space shuttle, and have confirmed that the rocket will be ready for its first test flight no later than November 2018.