MOSCOW, Dec. 27 (UPI) -- Although the Russian government approved a new federal space program this year for the period between now and 2015, there have been no breakthroughs in the last 12 months.
True, the national space program, which is supported by President Vladimir Putin and the government, has started receiving additional resources. In recent years, the country has mostly developed spacecraft for accomplishing socio-economic objectives and has overhauled its telecommunications satellite cluster.
Additional measures have been taken in order to reactivate the 13-satellite GLONASS (Global Navigation Satellite System) cluster, which on Aug. 31 received two new GLONASS-M satellites with a five-year service life.
Three more GLONASS-M spacecraft were launched on Dec. 25, and another one will lift off next year. Two GLONASS-M satellites will be assembled in 2007.
There are plans to have eight GLONASS satellites operating along each of the three orbital planes two years from now.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said the orbital cluster would almost certainly be ready by late 2009. "We can produce the required number of spacecraft whenever necessary," he said.
Unfortunately, the system's ground segment still leaves a lot to be desired. Starting on Jan. 1, 2007, all restrictions on the purchase and use of GPS receivers will be lifted all over Russia, but batch production of them has not yet been launched. Moreover, electronic maps of all of Russian territory will only be compiled by late 2007. Consequently, commercial use of the global positioning system for civilian purposes is still out of the question.
To remedy the situation, Putin has demanded that an official be placed in charge of GLONASS's ground segment. It would be pointless to expand the satellite cluster unless GPS receivers are mass-produced.
In 1995, Russia completed deployment of a GLONASS cluster but failed to use it accordingly. It appears that the situation may repeat itself today.
In 2006, Russia launched its first Resurs-DK1 remote-sensing satellite, which was activated in September after three-month test flights. The Resurs-DK1 can photograph from 450,000 to 750,000 square kilometers of the terrestrial surface per day with a resolution of one meter.
Russia has also continued to operate the experimental small-size Monitor-E optoelectronic surveillance satellite, which uses panchromatic cameras with a resolution of 10-11 meters and spectral-zone cameras with a resolution of 22-25 meters to fill daily commercial orders.
Both the Monitor-E and the Resurs-DK1are experimental remote-sensing satellites, are due to be replaced with new-generation Resurs-II spacecraft, which will capture multi-zone images of the terrestrial surface with a resolution of 0.5-2 meters in the visible and infrared bands. There are plans to orbit the first such optoelectronic surveillance satellite in 2009-2010. In all, seven remote-sensing satellites, as well as the required ground infrastructure, are to be deployed by 2015.
Apart from the main payload, the capacious and high-power Resurs-DK1 satellite stores instruments for scientific and applied research projects. For instance, the Pamela system scans the Universe for dark matter or hidden mass. Although dark-matter particles do not interact very often, Pamela has already registered more of these particles than all previous long-term observations taken together. Scientists hope to obtain the required results and to calculate particle mass before the satellite stops functioning three years from now.
Unfortunately, no full-fledged scientific satellites have been launched in Russia this year. So, Russian scientists have done their best to analyze the results of previous experiments and to conduct research aboard foreign spacecraft under international cooperation programs.
For example, they have priority rights for the use of 25 percent of observation time aboard the International Gamma Ray Astrophysics Laboratory (INTEGRAL), which has enabled them to find out the nature of the cosmic microwave background radiation spread evenly throughout the Milky Way galaxy. It turns out that the X-ray sources of such radiation are 100 times denser than had previously been believed. This Russian discovery rivals that of Galileo Galilei, who discovered 400 years ago that the Milky Way's brighter section comprises a multitude of dim stars.
Moreover, Russian scientists discovered quite a few very young and powerful X-ray sources, which were hidden from lower-power telescopes by stellar-wind clouds.
First of three parts
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(Yury Zaitsev is an expert with the Space Research Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences. This article is published by permission of the RIA Novosti news agency.)
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(United Press International's "Outside View" commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of United Press International. In the interests of creating an open forum, original submissions are invited
