Russian spaceport ready for inaugural launch
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.029754
Ars Technica : After a quarter century without its own space launch site, Russia has completed construction of its Vostochny Cosmodrome. The country has been leasing launch facilities at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. In 2011 Russia began its ambitious plan to build the $3 billion spaceport. Despite numerous worker strikes and charges of corruption, the project has proceeded according to plan. President Vladimir Putin visited the site in October 2015, and a series of launch tests and checks were successfully carried out in March. Now 27 April has been set for the first launch at the new site: A Soyuz-2.1a rocket will carry the Aist-2D spacecraft and the Mikhailo Lomonosov satellite into orbit.
