Rosaviakosmos Signs Agreement With Australian Asian-Pacific Space Center

The Rosaviakosmos space bureau and the Australian Asian-Pacific space center signed a contract on December 15, 2001. According to it, the sides will be launching spaceships from the Christmas Island, using a new Russian rocket Aurora, Director General of Rosaviakosmos Yury Koptev declared at a press conference today. According to him, the total cost of the project exceeds $1bn. However, the terms of the project and specifications of satellites have not been determined yet. According to the agreement, two documents are supposed to be signed in February 2002. In the first one, Russia's licensing system will be recognized, and the second one will be the mutual agreement on the maintaining of Russia's double-purpose technologies.