Up to 12 Proton-M missions possible from Baikonur next year - source
MOSCOW. Nov 11 (Interfax-AVN) - Russia is set to actively use the Baikonur spaceport's capacity for launching Proton-M heavy-lift rockets, a source in the rocket and space industry told Interfax-AVN on Wednesday.
"About 12 Proton rockets may be launched from the southern spaceport next year," the source said.
"Four commercial launches, five launches under contracts with Roscosmos, one under the ExoMars program, and two for the Defense Ministry have been planned," he said.
"The final number of launches will depend on the readiness of payloads to a large extent," the source said. "The launch of the Multipurpose Laboratory Module [MLM] to the International Space Station is planned for 2016. But it is still unknown whether the MLM will be ready by then," he said.
Fuel for Proton-M rockets has highly toxic components, and Kazakhstan insists on a gradual reduction of the number of Proton missions. "Proton launches from Baikonur will stop after 2020," Roscosmos head Igor Komarov said.
It was reported earlier that Russia would inaugurate the 2016 'space year' with the launch of a Proton-M launch vehicle carrying the European communication satellite Eutelsat-9B.