Russia will conduct four commercial launches from the Vostochny space center in Russia's Far East in 2018, the director of Roscosmos state corporation's representative office at Vostochny said Thursday.

He added that technologies developed in Russia's universities and laboratories could be used in the spacecraft launched from Vostochny in 2018.

"In the next [2017] year, two spacecraft launches [are scheduled], in 2018 two launches of spacecraft and four commercial launches are scheduled," Konstantin Chmarov said.

Russia carried out a maiden space launch from the Vostochny cosmodrome on April 28. It involved a Soyuz-2.1a light class space rocket with three research satellites.

Vostochny, which has been under construction since 2012, is expected to reduce Russia's dependency on the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan. Baikonur is on lease to Russia until 2050.

Source: Sputnik News