Putin ratchets up spending on the Glonass satellite programme – allocates $4.4 billion

13 Sep 2008

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Moscow: Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin said he had signed a directive on Friday allocating an additional $2.6 billion to develop the country's Glonass satellite system. The system is the Russian equivalent of the US Global Positioning System (GPS), and is designed for both military and civilian use.

Glonass Like the US GPS, the Russian Glonass (Global Navigation Satellite System) allows users to identify their current location and direction.

"I have signed a government directive on increased financing of the Glonass program to the sum of 67 billion rubles ($2.6 billion)," Putin declared at a meeting with deputy prime minister Sergei Ivanov.

Ivanov, who is responsible for state policies relating to industry development, defence, nuclear and space industries and transportation, said the majority of the funds would go to adding new satellites to the existing Glonass satellite grouping.

"Six new Glonass satellites will be put into orbit this year to total 22 spacecraft," he said. "We are hoping that Glonass will provide global navigation and positioning coverage by 2012."

Putin also indicated that he would soon sanction 45 billion rubles ($1.8 billion) in additional funding for the country's space programme.

Early this month, the head of the Russian Space Agency (Roscosmos), Anatoly Perminov, had said that the number of satellites in the Glonass system would go up from the current 16 to 30 by 2011.

According to the Russian Central Research Institute for Machine Building, currently, 13 Glonass satellites are fully functional while two are undergoing maintenance and one has is due to be withdrawn from the orbital grouping.

According to declared plans, the Glonass system will deploy 18 satellites for navigation services that will cover the entire territory of the Russian Federation, while 24 satellites would be deployed for global services.

The current sanction of 67 billion rubles ($2.6 billion), with an additional sanction of  45 billion rubles ($1.8 billion) in the pipeline, is a dramatic improvement of the total of 9.9 billion rubles ($418.25 million) allocated from the federal budget in 2007 and 4.7 billion rubles ($200 million) in 2006.

India and the Glonass
Russia and India signed two cooperation agreements in 2007 during then Russian president Vladimir Putin's visit to the country. Then Russian defence minister Sergei Ivanov also said that New Delhi had agreed to launch Glonass-M satellites with the help of Indian booster rockets, and to create new-generation navigation satellites.

According to an earlier December 2005 directive by president Putin, the Glonass system was supposed to be made ready and put into position by 2008.

The Glonass programme was technically launched on 12 October 1982, but the formal launch took place only on 24 September 1993.

At the beginning of 2007 the Glonass system only had 13 satellites in orbit. There are two versions of the  satellites in use - Glonass and its updated version, Glonass-M. This latter has a longer service life of seven years and is equipped with updated antenna feeder systems and an additional navigation frequency for civilian users.

A more advanced version, Glonass-K, is an entirely new model based on a non-pressurized platform, standardized to the specifications of the previous models' platform, Express-1000. The estimated service life of the 'K' version has been increased to 10-12 years, and a third "civilian" L-range frequency has been added.

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