Izvestiya: “GLONASS opens its ‘eyes’”
Russia is continuing to expand its GLONASS navigation system in the near-earth orbit, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin announced yesterday. The system will have 27 or 28 satellites, or "eyes", by the end of the year. Their current number is 21.
So far, only the United States and Russia have had the luxury of developing their own navigation system, a costly project. Earlier, Europe also planned to join in the race, but shortly after fell far behind.
The Russian government is investing large funds in the project. The country spent nearly 2.5 billion roubles ($79.45mn) in 2009, with plans to spend 2 billion roubles ($63.57mn) in 2010 and another 1.7 billion roubles ($54.04mn) in 2011, according to Putin.
He said GLONASS development is a clear priority for Russia.
"Our objective is to make sure our own navigation system is broadly used", he stressed. "It is important from a commercial perspective as well. The system will be hard to expand without developing commercial applications".
Russia plans to build up the satellite group to solve this problem. The creation of digital maps would place Russia on an equal footing with the United States. Only then would the navigation system begin functioning at full capacity and start bringing profit.
Putin believes a map package should be formed not only for special customers, but also for common users.
"While developing and using maps, there must be close interaction and clearly-assigned terms of reference between government bodies, a federal network operator and commercial providers", he said. "There must also be a fine-tuned information exchange among them. Without a unified approach, consumers will have to cope with incompatible navigational maps, which could seriously affect the system's operation".
Anastasia Savinykh
