Putin wants Russian space industry to shine again

MOSCOW (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin on Friday toldofficials to beef up Russia's space programme and speedfinancing of a new cosmodrome in the Far East to keep thenation's leading role in space, Russian media reported.

"Now we have the real chance to move from exploiting andsupporting previous, often Soviet, 'space capital' to carryingout new, ambitious projects in space," Putin told a meeting ofthe Security Council.

Putin was speaking on the eve of Cosmonauts' Day whenRussia marks the first manned flight into space. Sovietmilitary pilot Yuri Gagarin became a national hero after his108-minute flight in 1961 which humiliated Cold War foe theUnited States.

Nowadays Russia's space industry, which prides itself onlaunching the first "sputnik" satellite into space, the firstwoman cosmonaut and first spacewalk, has been forced to fallback on sending tourists to space in a bid to raise funds.

Russia rents its main cosmodrome, Baikonur, from Kazakhstanand sends all crews and cargo to the International SpaceStation (ISS) from there. Putin said time had come for Russiato have "a guaranteed access to space".

"This means to have a possibility to make launches for allpurposes from our own land -- from automated satellites tomanned spacecraft and inter-planetary stations," he said.

The new cosmodrome, in Russia's Far East region of Amur,will be called Vostochny and is set to be finished by 2015.

Anatoly Perminov, head of Russia's space agency Roskosmos,said all Russian manned space programmes would be transferredto Vostochny by 2020.

Putin said other projects would include the development ofRussian military, civilian and scientific satellites, as wellas national satellite navigation system GLONASS.

Work should also be intensified on the new family of Angarabooster rockets, Putin said, adding "the system must reallybecome global and competitive". The Angara will be able toplace heavy payloads of up to 24.5 tonnes into orbit.

But the tumult of Russia's 1990s wild capitalism and scarcefinancing held back work on Russia's segment of the ISS.

The 2003 disintegration of the U.S. Space Shuttle Columbiaon re-entry dealt another blow to the multinational project,and Russia has born the brunt of sending crews and cargo to theISS.

Space tourism helps bridge some of the gaps in Russia'sspace budget, fetching around $25 million (12.7 million pounds)from each tourist.

Russia intends to ask its ISS partners in Paris in July toextend the lifespan of the ISS by five years to 2020 because ofthe delayed construction of the outposts' Russian segment, asenior space official said on Thursday.

(Editing by Matthew Jones)