Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived at the Baikonur cosmodrome. He attended celebrations for the 50th anniversary of the cosmodrome together with Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev. Nazarbayev arrived at Baikonur half an hour earlier. He met Putin at the ladder of the plane. Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov, the commander of Space Troops, Colonel-General Vladimir Popovkin, and the chief of the Federal Space Agency, Anatoly Perminov, met the president. Putin and Nazarbayev visited one of 11 installation and test bays of Baikonur where heavy-lift rockets Proton are prepared for launches. The presidents also will saw a launch pad for Protons. Putin and Nazarbayev laid a bedstone of a Russian-Kazakh space rocket complex Baiterek. The Federal Space Agency’s chief Anatoly Perminov said the complex would be built in 2008-09 under an accord signed by the Russian and Kazakh presidents in January 2004. Putin and Nazarbayev also visited Launch Pad Number 1 from which Yuri Gagarin flew to space. The presidents will trip to the city of Baikonur, former Leninsk, where they will lay flowers at a monument to people who died in accidents at the cosmodrome. This is Putin first visit to the cosmodrome. The Russian president flew to Russia’s northern cosmodrome Plesetsk in a Su-25 fighter jet in his days as prime minister. He then said that he got “very strong sensations”. Military pilots in a joke advised him to fly to Baikonur for still stronger impressions. Nazarbayev visited Baikonur several times. Many other leaders, including first Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev and French president Francois Mitterrand, also visited the cosmodrome. Baikonur “ranks among the most effective cosmodromes of the world and continues to play the key role in Russia’s a guaranteed access to outer space and its constant presence there,” - Sergei Ivanov, Russian Defence Minister. Three space rockets and three intercontinental ballistic missiles were fired from Baikonur only last year, not counting the thirteen space vehicles that were placed on various orbits during the said period. Thirteen more space starts were effected in cooperation with the Federal Space Agency of Russia (Roskosmos). Three launches of boosters were carried out jointly with Roskosmos crews during the five first months of this year. Flight tests of new models of space rocket hardware, developed in accordance with tactical and technical assignments of the Defence Ministry ( Proton-M, “Soyuz-2”, and “Briz-M” booster unit) are now proceeding apace at the cosmodrome. Work on conversion programs is actively proceeding at Baikonur, too. Light-class boosters are being built there on the basis of intercontinental ballistic missiles in accordance with those programs.
Russian and Kazakh Presidents Vladimir Putin and Nursultan Nazarbayev launched a new Russian-Kazakh space centre, Baiterek. They did not lay the first foundation stone of the space centre but were photographed against its symbolic first stone and approved the start of the construction.
The Kazakh president asked Russian specialists whether a good site had been chosen for the new centre.
"It is a good site. We inspected the entire Baikonur area trying to find what would be an optimal place for launches." - Alexander Medvedev, Head of the Khrunichev State Space Centre.
The construction will begin a hundred meters off the symbolic first stone - a granite boulder with the inscription: "The Baiterek Space Centre Will Be Built Here." The stone will remain at this site as a monument.
