According to Russian media Russia’s Svobodny space center, used in recent years to launch US and Israeli satellites, will be shut down, AFP reports Wednesday.

“Our authorities have received the official confirmation on this from Moscow,” a spokesman for the governor of the Amour region, where the centre is based, said.

The administrative chief in the town of Uglegorsk, where the Svobodny center is based, meanwhile said that an Israeli satellite launch was scheduled there for 2008, but could not confirm that it would go ahead as planned.

Russia’s military space forces’ press service refused to divulge any information on upcoming launches.

The Svobdny center was built in 1996 to enable Russia to conduct launches further south than its Plessetsk space center in the north of the country.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 Moscow lost its Baikonur base in Kazakhstan and has since been forced to rent it.

Popularity: 1% [?]