Russia, India to form joint venture for producing navigation equipment.

12/3 Tass 3967

MOSCOW, March 12 (Itar-Tass) -- Russia and India will form a joint
venture, which will provide navigation services in India and produce
navigation gadgets for civilian users, a source at the Navigation
Information Systems federal network operator told Itar-Tass on Friday.

"A memorandum to that effect was signed in New Delhi during the
working visit of the Russian prime minister. The Federal Space Agency and
the Navigation Information Systems signed the document on behalf of
Russia, while the Indian signatory was the Indian Space Research
Organization (ISRO)," he said.
"The sides proceeded from earlier intergovernmental agreements on
cooperation in space exploration and joint development and use of Russia's
Glonass satellite navigation system," he said.
The partners will form a joint working group, which will draft a
business plan of the prospective company. The latter will develop the
infrastructure, provide navigation services in India, and produce
Glonass/GPS/IRNSS gadgets for civilian users.
"High-tech cooperation with India is a priority of Russia," Prime
Minister Vladimir Putin told Indian businessmen in New Delhi.
"The joint venture is an important step in Russia-India high-tech
cooperation and Glonass promotion. India is a primary market for Russia
and a serious partner in joint development of navigation technologies.
That would be a long-term and mutually beneficial cooperation," Navigation
Information Systems General Director Alexander Gurko said.
Glonass is a radio-based satellite navigation system, developed by the
former Soviet Union and now operated by the Russian Space Forces. It is an
alternative and complementary to the United States' Global Positioning
System (GPS) and the planned Galileo positioning system of the European
Union (EU).
Development on Glonass began in 1976, with a goal of global coverage
by 1991. Beginning on 12 October 1982, numerous rocket launches added
satellites to the system until the constellation was completed in 1995.
Economic problems suspended the project, and Russia committed to restore
the system in 2001.
On May 18, 2007, then Russian president Vladimir Putin signed a decree
officially providing open access to the civilian navigation signals of the
Glonass system, to Russian and foreign consumers, free of charge and
without limitations. The Russian president also directed the Federal Space
Agency to coordinating work to maintain, develop and enable the system for
civilian and commercial needs.
Glonass was developed to provide real-time position and velocity
determination, initially for use by the Soviet military for navigation and
ballistic missile targeting. It was the Soviet Union's second-generation
satellite navigation system, improving on the Tsikada system, which
required one to two hours of signal processing to calculate a location
with high accuracy. By contrast, once a Glonass receiver is tracking the
satellite signals, a position fix is available instantly.
A fully operational Glonass constellation consists of 24 satellites,
with 21 used for transmitting signals and three for on-orbit spares,
deployed in three orbital planes. The three orbital planes' ascending
nodes are separated by 120° with each plane containing eight equally
spaced satellites. The orbits are roughly circular, with an inclination of
about 64.8°, and orbit the Earth at an altitude of 19,100 kilometers,
which yields an orbital period of approximately 11 hours, 15 minutes. The
planes themselves have a latitude displacement of 15°, which results in
the satellites crossing the equator one at a time, instead of three at
once. The overall arrangement is such that, if the constellation is fully
populated, a minimum of five satellites is in view from any given point at
any given time.
-0-yer


Delete & Prev | Delete & Next