Kommersant: 350 billion will be spent on GLONASS

Roscosmos and the Ministry of Economic Development agreed on the draft federal target program "Maintaining, Development and Use of the GLONASS system" for 2012-2020. According to Kommersant, the new infusion will amount to 346.595 billion rubles - it is mainly budget money. The previous program operated from 2001 to the end of 2011. It provided for budget financing in the amount of 117 billion, but the amount of payments amounted to 107.1 billion rubles.

Now the GLONASS orbital group is deployed in full force. For the purpose of the purpose, 24 spacecraft work, in addition, four are in the reserve, one in flight tests and two more on the study by the general designer. In 2020, there will be 30 satellites in the orbital group, six of which will be in reserve. To maintain the orbital group in 2012-2020, the program is planned to launch 13 GLONASS-M spacecraft, as well as the new generation of GLONASS-K in the amount of 22.

Already, GLONASS can compete with the American GPS in accuracy, says an employee of the government apparatus. "Over five years, GLONASS accuracy has been improved by an order of magnitude - up to 2.8 meters. A similar indicator of GPS is 1.8 meters." According to the interlocutor of the publication, by 2020, Glonass should overtake GPS according to this indicator: the accuracy will be 0.6 meters against 0.7 meters among the Americans.

On December 30, it became known that the former first deputy head of the presidential administration Vladislav Surkov, who took the post of Deputy Prime Minister, would oversee the GLONASS project in the government. This was announced at a meeting with Surkov by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. "We will continue the work that you did earlier. In the part regarding modernization, I would ask you to engage in such high -tech projects as GLONASS, and expand this work for education, science, healthcare. To develop this complex, give it a more modern, innovative nature," Putin said.

On December 27, Surkov, who for many years was responsible for domestic policy in the Kremlin, was appointed Deputy Prime Minister for modernization. The new appointment was announced by President Dmitry Medvedev. "A few years ago, when the modernization commission was created, Surkov was engaged very seriously by these topics. I believe that you should take these topics within the executive branch," Medvedev said. “This work is very interesting to me,” Surkov said. Surkov said he himself asked for a new appointment. “For a long time, I asked the leadership to give me the opportunity to start a new life since the New Year. It was understood, for which many thanks,” Surkov said. "I hope I did not fail my employers and my colleagues. Democracy was preserved, repaired and acts on December 22 transferred to the operating mode. I hope it will successfully pass the upcoming tests," the former first deputy head of the administration said.