MOSCOW, December 19, 23:54 /ITAR-TASS/. Russia will create the United Rocket and Space Corporation by February 2, 2014, Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) Deputy Head Igor Komarov said on Thursday, December 19.
The corporation to be created on the basis of the Space Instrument-Making Research Institute will become a full-fledged legal entity in 2015. Its development strategy consists of several stages. The first stage is consolidation to be completed by April 2015. The second stage is reorganisation: from 2014 through 2017, the corporation will restructure its capacities and create a management system. The third stage is development and growth (until 2020): the corporation will enter international markets and position Russia as a key player and leader in certain areas of space activities.
The purpose of creating the corporation is to solve the problems facing the Russian space industry, which include delays in the implementation of contracts, technical backwardness of enterprises, and the generation gap.
President Vladimir Putin on December 2 signed a decree ordering the creation of the United Rocket and Space Corporation.
According to the decree, several federal state-owned unitary space enterprises will be reorganised into open joint stock companies to be fully owned by the federal government. Subsequently each of them will contribute 100 percent of shares minus one share to the new corporation’s authorised capital.
The president instructed the government to ensure the implementation of the decree within two years and bring its acts in line with the decree within the next two months.
Roscosmos Head Oleg Ostapenko said later in the day that a good candidate to head the new corporation.
Ostapenko also said that there were two candidates for the post of head of Russia’s new Vostochny Cosmodrome in the Far Eastern Amur Region. “I will name them a bit later. You know them quite well,” he told the journalists.
The candidate to head the Vostochny Cosmodrome has been selected and the appointment may be made in January 2014, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said last week.
“Preliminarily, there is one candidate. You can count the fitting candidates on the fingers of one hand,” he said.
Rogozin said he and Ostapenko intended to have an audience with President Vladimir Putin in January 2014 in order to discuss space plans.
When asked to evaluate Ostapenko’s work, Rogozin said, “All work is still ahead and the most crucial moment is coming.”
He believes that Roscosmos should play the role of system integrator and regulator in the market of space services.
Ostapenko said earlier that the head of the new cosmodrome would be appointed in the first quarter of 2014. “But this is a stretched timeframe. I think we will do it much faster,” he said.
When such sophisticated facilities are built, work has to be coordinated at all levels, and the cosmodrome construction directorate is not enough for that, Rogozin said.
Vostochny should become operational in 2015 and start sending manned missions in 2018.
The comsodrome is intended for launching automatic and piloted space missions under national, international and commercial programmes. Its construction started in 2012 and the first launch is expected to be carried out in by 2015 on board Soyuz-2 light carrier rockets. By 2018, it will be ready to launch heavy Angara-5A rockets. The cosmodrome will also have infrastructure for future piloted missions.
More than 400 social, engineering and transport infrastructure facilities, 115 km of roads and 125 km of railroads will be built at the cosmodrome.