Russia and Kazakhstan have signed a package of agreements on space co-operation. On 9 January, presidents Vladimir Putin and Nursultan Nazarbayev signed an extension of the Russian lease on the Baikonur cosmodrome to 2050. The agreement extends the initial deal struck in December 1994, when Russia was given a 20-year lease on the site for $115 million a year in rent and the obligation to spend another $50 million annually to keep the infrastructure intact, writes Vladimir Karnozov.
The deal keeps the same financial parameters, but Russia wants to revise the terms. In a bid to put pressure on Kazakhstan, Russia threatened to move all military launches to the Plesetsk and Svobodny cosmodromes within its own territory, starting in 2005, and some commercial launches to Plesetsk and Kourou, French Guiana as soon as new launch pads for the Angara and Soyuz boosters are completed.
Baikonur has 15 pads for Tsyklon, Energia, Molniya, Proton, Rokot, Soyuz, Tsyklon and Zenit launch vehicles, half of them not operational. The cosmodrome launches all manned and unmanned flights to the International Space Station, and the majority of commercial flights, including Russia's most commercially successful booster, the Proton, flights on which are marketed by Lockheed Martin-led International Launch Services.
A second agreement has been signed covering development of Kazakhstan's first communications satellite by Russia's Khrunichev. The television-broadcast and data-communications satellite, based on the Yakhta spacecraft bus, is due for launch from Baikonur in 2005. Khrunichev emerged as the winner after Kazakhstan studied proposals from France's Alcatel Space and four Russian bidders.
Source: Flight International
