In mid-April Moscow hosted the International Satellite Navigation Forum. The main topic was the Global Navigation System (GLONASS) developed in Russia. The system is composed of satellites placed in high orbits. These satellites send special navigation signals to the earth enabling users not only to detect their exact coordinates and velocity but also tie their current location to time. The system allows users to determine locations with a high degree of precision (up to one meter) both on land and on water.
Being a government project, GLONASS was originally designed as a dual-purpose system that would service the needs of both the defense ministry and civil users. The launch of the first GLONASS satellite took place 25 years ago. Commercial use of the system only started in 1993. Yet even then the orbital complex was not yet complete.
It is only recently that politicians resumed talk of the satellite navigation system. In 2005 the Russian President Vladimir Putin drew the government's attention to the need for completing the project in the shortest time possible as well as planning the range and scale of GLONASS use. Later Putin pointed out that GLONASS should be designed to provide high quality services nation-wide and be competitive in the global market.
"For users to make their choice in favor of GLONASS, the system must demonstrate impeccable performance and be cheaper than GPS", said Putin. By the end of March 2007 the National Navigation System concept more or less crystallized.
9.88 billion rubles' ($380 million) worth of the federal budget money will go to facilitate the Russian global navigation system in 2007. The figure was announced by Deputy Head of RosKosmos (Russian Federal Space Agency) Yuri Nosenko. The official pointed out that this is only part of the funding for this project. Other, non-budget funding sources are yet to be attracted to the program. The exact figure of the funds to be raised has not been disclosed yet but there is talk about hundreds of millions of Russian rubles. The money will go to finance the design and production of on-ground hardware facilities for the users of satellite navigation.
The number of satellites within the orbital complex will soon reach 18. In the coming years new generation Glonass-M with a seven-year operation life and Glonass-K, ten-year operation life, will join the orbital complex. The RosKosmos estimate has it that the system should cover the whole territory of the Russian Federation by the end of this year. Many experts, however, believe that eighteen satellites are not enough to provide proper functioning of the system - there have to be a few machines at stand-by on different orbits. Thus, the American GPS system has thirty satellites.
The important thing is the Russian navigation system will cover the civil sector as well. First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov suggested it should be used, for instance, for speeding up customs procedures and formalities - large trucks queuing to pass customs control can be spotted and directed to special locations within the border for passing customs there. Each such truck can be GLONASS-marked for cargo transfer control.
As for receiver devices, the Global Navigation System Federal program envisages the development of new-generation multi-system navigation terminals (GLONASS--GPS--Galileo) based on large integral circuits over the next two years. Experts believe that to saturate the national market with competitive hardware it is required to mass-produce no less than 350-400 thousand devices a year.
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