Anatoly Kiselev, the general director of the Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center, offered his resignation to Russian President Vladimir Putin Wednesday.

Kiselev, who worked at Khrunichev for 25 years was promoted to general director in 1995 by then President Boris Yeltsin.

In his letter to Putin, Kiselev reminded the president that he had already turned in his resignation twice: once on May 18, 2000 and again on October 22, 2000. Kiselev said health issues were his main reason for retiring.

"I cannot be indifferent to the fate of Khrunichev," said Kiselev. "This is why I started looking for my replacement many years ago." Kiselev aid he had in mind three possible successors but did not reveal their names in the letter.

Khrunichev Space Center is one of the Russia's more successful aerospace enterprises. From the Soviet era to the present, the facility has developed and built strategic bombers; four generations of silo-based Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles; the Proton rocket, Russia’s main space workhorse; as well as the Salyut family of space stations and their successor, the Mir outpost.

Kiselev characterized the Khrunichev’s current financial and economic situation as ‘stable.’ Its employees have secure paid jobs through 2002. In 2000, Russia's Accounting Chamber, the state body that oversees the use of federal budgetary money by business and organizations, investigated the center's finances. According to Kiselev's letter, the office found no evidence of financial mishandling. However, it was learned that the state owed the center almost $18 million.

Khrunichev plays a crucial role in Russia’s participation in the International Space Station (ISS) program. It manufactured the first element of the ISS -- the Zarya module or Functional Cargo Block (FGB) -- which was successfully put in orbit in November 1998. It also built the Zvezda service module that was launched in July 2000.

Zvezda is a currently the control center and sleeping quarters for the station's first permanent crew -- American mission commander Bill Shepherd, along with cosmonauts Yuri Gidzenko and Sergey Krikalev.

The center is currently developing new launch vehicles, including the Angara, Rokot and Yakhta launch vehicles.

Kiselev described the three launch vehicles as technically more advanced their American, European, Japanese or Chinese equivalents. Though developed for the Russian government, Kiselev noted that their development was paid for by money earned by the center. Khrunichev also channels "huge portions of its own financial resources" to the support of launch infrastructure at both the Baikonur and Plesetsk Cosmodromes, wrote Kiselev.