Russia reveals space ambitions

Forty seven years after Yury Gagarin first went into orbit, Russia has unveiled ambitious plans to advance its space programme even further. A new launch pad will be built at Vostochny in the Amur region by 2015 and five years later a manned assembly complex in orbit will build spacecrafts to fly to the Moon and Mars.

Outgoing President unveiled the plans on Friday at a Russian Security Council meeting.

The assembly complex will open at around the time that the International Space Station is decommissioned.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, the 17th mission to the ISS blasted off from the Baikonur launch pad in Kazakhstan, carrying a Russian crew - Flight Commander Sergey Volkov and Flight Engineer Oleg Kononenko – and the first ever South Korean cosmonaut into space.

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