Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday declared the year of 2011 as Russia's Space Year.
Russia is due to celebrate in April the 50th anniversary of its first manned space flight. Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin blasted into the orbit on April 12, 1961 for a 90-minute flight.
Also on Tuesday, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin visited the Mission Control center outside Moscow in the city of Korolyov, chairing a meeting on preparations of celebrating the jubilee.
Putin said about 50 space launches have been planned for this year.
"It is planned to put about 50 spacecraft to orbit. Besides, we will approve a new federal program for the development of the Glonass navigation satellite network until 2020," said Putin as quoted by the Itar-Tass news agency.
"The federal budget will assign 115 billion rubles (3.76 billion U.S. dollars) for the national space program," he added.
According to the head of Russia's Federal Space Agency, Roskosmos, Anatoly Perminov, on March 16 a manned spacecraft will be launched to the International Space Station. The Russian spaceship will bear the name of Gagarin and become the first spacecraft having "personal" name instead of usual technical ones.