Moscow: Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Monday
evinced interest in speeding up cooperation with India in the
commercialisation of orbital navigation system GLONASS and
said he intends to discuss it during his visit to New Delhi
next month.
Russia has revived the Soviet era Global Navigation
Satellite System (GLONASS) to end the monopoly of the US
Pentagon-controlled Navstar marketed worldwide as GPS and has
also agreed to provide India access to its military segment.
"We have quite good prospectus in international
cooperation in GLONASS, specially with India and Kazakhstan,"
Putin said at today`s meeting with Vice Premier Sergei Ivanov,
who looks after the GLONASS project.
"I hope that in the near future we will jointly start
producing the necessary equipment and marketing GLONASS in
these countries," Putin said in his televised remarks at the
meeting and added that all the necessary agreements were
already in place and he intends to discuss it with India.
Russia currently has a total of 22 GLONASS satellites in
orbit out of which 16 are operational.
By the end of this year Russia plans to launch six
satellites, including three next month, to expand the global
footprint of GLONASS.
An orbital navigation system is meant to provide reliable
positioning, navigation, and timing services to worldwide
users on a continuous basis.
PTI
