MOSCOW, April 12. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin is hopeful that a high-tech space cluster will be set up at the Vostochny spaceport in the country’s Far East, he said on Thursday.
"You know we have built a new Cosmodrome there and gradually an entire town will be growing there. However, the matter in quesiton is not the location. The matter is, at least I hope so, that a new high-tech cluster will be set up in the Far East," he told cosmonauts while visiting the Kosmos (Space) pavilion at Moscow’s VDNKh exhibition center.
Putin congratulated the veteran astronauts on Cosmonautics Day and pointed out that the groundwork laid out during the Soviet times was being employed intensively nowadays.
"Despite certain troubles, we are rolling out this milestone program step by step and little by little," he said. "It is crucial for both defense and for the economy. You know it better than me since it involves communications, monitoring, and so forth."
The president vowed to further cultivate those fields.
Putin recalled that back in February he signed a decree on the construction of a super heavy lift rocket designed to operate in outer space, first, for orbiting the moon, then for delivering cargoes to the moon and later for manned flights.
"For that purpose, we will be harnessing both the geostationary orbit and the lunar one," he said.