| Russia is trying to gain navigational sovereignty By the end of this week, the leadership of the Russian Space Agency must report to President Vladimir Putin its proposals for reducing the production time and launches of Global Navigation System (GLONASS) satellites. This is necessary for the complete restoration of the orbital constellation and for consumers to receive navigation information throughout the country.
Even before the New Year, the president demanded that GLONASS be put into commercial use as soon as possible, having determined in advance who would use the system’s services and in what volumes. Addressing the Cabinet of Ministers, the head of state said: “To draw the government’s attention to the fact that it is necessary to create the GLONASS system in a shorter period of time than originally planned. There are such possibilities. This is exactly where money can and should be invested if we want to develop the economy in an innovative direction.” Strictly speaking, 24 navigation spacecraft should be launched into orbit not by 2010, as previously planned, but almost two years earlier. As experts joke, we need to “open the cosmic eye” earlier.
The head of Roscosmos, Anatoly Perminov, does not hide the fact that this task is very difficult. “I can’t say now how to do this unambiguously,” he lamented in December. But he firmly promised: “The Russian Minister of Defense and I will do everything possible to complete this adjusted program on time.” Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, on the contrary, expressed firm confidence that all 24 devices will be launched by 2008. The Research and Production Association of Applied Mechanics in the city of Zheleznogorsk, Krasnoyarsk Territory, has been tasked with building nine modified Glonass-M navigation satellites by 2008. And, perhaps, increase the pace of construction. This will be possible if there is money, they say at the plant.
This task is superimposed on another, no less important one - the production of domestic navigation receivers. At the end of December last year, the heads of Roscosmos, Rosprom and some other interested departments held a meeting at which they discussed the problems of creating domestic GLONASS signal receivers and installing them on vehicles. The question is far from idle, since a full-fledged space constellation of a system without receiving devices on Earth loses its meaning. A similar situation arose in Soviet times, when more than two dozen satellites had to spin in orbit idly. In addition, in accordance with the government decision, starting from 2006, all new vehicles in the country (cars, airplanes, helicopters, sea and river vessels) must be equipped with GLONASS equipment. And by 2009, without exception, all equipment in operation must be equipped with domestic navigation receivers. Things are going badly with them; there are fears of a repetition of the “scissors” situation, when the space segment significantly outstrips the ground segment.
It seems that Russia has taken seriously the task of restoring navigational sovereignty. The fact is that today all Russian ships and planes sail and fly, that is, position themselves in sea and air space, according to signals from the American GPS system. Even the aircraft of the Ministry of Defense, admitted the commander of military transport aviation, Lieutenant General Viktor Denisov, answering a question from a Vremya Novostey observer, have GPS equipment. Enterprises and even entire regions enter into contracts with GPS. Dependence on someone else's signal could lead, the military fears, to the fact that at a critical moment the Americans will simply turn off consumers, who, as a result, will literally go blind, fly and sail “in the wrong direction.” The second, no less important function of GLONASS is providing accurate time signals.
The first satellite of the domestic navigation system was launched back in October 1982, and GLONASS was officially put into operation in September 1993. However, due to insufficient funding from 1995 to 2002, the system simply deteriorated. Having come to their senses, the government tried to catch up. Today there are 17 operational satellites of the navigation system in orbit, although at least 24 are required to create a global navigation field and, accordingly, highly accurate determination of the location of land-, sea-, air- and space-based consumers. Moreover, the average period of operation in satellite orbit is planned to be extended to 7-12 years instead of the current ones three. The return of navigation sovereignty will not have a financial impact on Russian consumers: the cost of GLONASS services will not exceed GPS prices.
Not wanting to be dependent on the United States, Europe is also pushing ahead with the creation of its own Galileo navigation system. On December 28, 2005, its first satellite with the GIOVE-A navigation device was launched by the Soyuz-FG launch vehicle from the Baikonur Cosmodrome and transferred to the control of the customer - the European Space Agency (ESA). By 2008, four spacecraft are planned to be launched for Galileo, and 30 by 2010. By this time, the system is expected to be used by about 1.8 billion subscribers. Galileo is already being talked about today as the most profitable infrastructure project: profits are expected to be approximately 4.6 times higher than investments. It is quite possible that it was these calculations that prompted Vladimir Putin to speed up the completion of the domestic system.
Yesterday it became known that one of the three satellites launched before the New Year from Baikonur had problems. However, according to cosmodrome employees, they do not radically affect the operation of the device. Each such problem is painfully perceived not only by the Russian side. The fact is that experts are increasingly talking about the possibility of creating a single global system that will combine information from the satellites of all three navigation systems - GLONASS, Galileo and GPS. In the future, Roscosmos even intends to create unified stations for receiving signals from all three systems. Roscosmos confirms that a tripartite agreement with NASA and the European Space Agency is already being prepared. Nikolay POROSKOV |
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