MOSCOW, April 26 – Russia's Foundation for Advanced Studies is planning to implement the Air Launch project in the 2020s – the launch of an orbital spaceplane from a super-heavy transport aircraft, according to a report of the public council of the Russian government's military-industrial commission, which was released at a meeting of the council in the State Duma on April 23.

"A multipurpose aerospace system could be the first step towards the commercialization of space – the project, sufficiently developed in the 1980-1990s, of a two-stage space complex, which consists of a carrier aircraft (An-225 Mriya) and an orbital spacecraft launched from it – a spaceplane," reads one of the paragraphs in the section of priority areas of research and development.