Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has signed a decree allowing foreign personnel to participate in launches at the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan.

Foreign specialists will be allowed to the sites at the Baikonur space center "where works primarily linked to ensuring the launch of spacecraft are carried out," says the decree published on the Russian government website on Friday.

The Russian Defense Ministry may on a contract basis use space systems and military complexes and attract personnel of military units to conduct the launches of the MKA-FKI (PN2) spacecraft for the fundamental space research and Meteor-M 2 satellites by the Soyuz-2 carrier rocket, equipped with the Frigate rocket booster.

The launches of TDS-1 and UKube-l spacecraft for research (the UK), M3 MSat (Canada) and AISSat-2 (Norway) spacecrafts used for the automatic identification and location of maritime vessels, SkySat-2 commercial Earth observation satellite (the US) and DX-1 spacecraft used for automatic identification and location of maritime vessels (Russia) will be conducted on the contract basis.

Russia has leased the Baikonur space center from Kazakhstan since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the lease treaty will expire in 2050. It pays annual fee of $115 million for the use of the space center, which has the world's busiest launch schedule at the moment.

Source: RIA Novosti