Some elements of the GLONASS cluster, which has no standby satellites, are regularly deactivated for maintenance purposes. In fact, the system has not operated at full capacity since 1995 and therefore has not been able to cover the entire world.

One of the 24 satellites flies just above the horizon and so cannot be seen. With its 18 spacecraft, GLONASS will only ensure uninterrupted ship and airplane traffic, while other users will have to wait for two hours or more.

For this reason, it is unlikely that GLONASS could operate on the GPS-dominated Russian navigation services market in the next five to 10 years.

Russian Transport Minister Igor Levitin said only about 1,200 of Russia's 5,000 airliners have navigation equipment, mostly GPS receivers (92 percent); GLONASS receivers account for the remaining 8 percent.

Although Russian First Deputy Premier Sergei Ivanov is in charge of the system's development, President Vladimir Putin has aptly remarked that no one is directly responsible for the end result and for the system's ground segment. Moreover, Russian enterprises have not yet mastered batch production of user-friendly navigation equipment.

The situation is reminiscent of the COSPAS-SARSAT project, an international satellite-based search-and-rescue system established by Canada, France, the United States and the former Soviet Union in 1979.

The COSPAS-SARSAT cluster was fully deployed in 1995, but production of navigating equipment remained a problem. There are now about 660,000 locator beacons operating in the world, but there are only several hundred Russian planes and helicopters that have them. As before, it sometimes takes months to locate a missing plane in the Siberian taiga.

We must realize that the GLONASS system will not be commissioned before 2010-2011 and that there would be no use for a smaller 18-satellite version.

There are plans to orbit the first Uragan-K satellites, i.e., modified versions of the non-hermetically sealed Express-1000 space platform, in 2009-2010. Each Uragan-K satellite will have three channels, including one for civilian users, which will ensure its dependability and precision of navigation. The new satellite will weigh half that of its predecessor, the Uragan-M.

This means that the new medium-class Soyuz-2 rockets, rather than the expensive heavy-duty Proton vehicles, will be able to launch two Uragan-Ks at a time from the Plesetsk space center in the Arkhangelsk Region in northern Russia. In all, there are plans to orbit 27 such satellites that will operate until 2025.

A future, more advanced satellite navigation system will be made up of Uragan-KM spacecraft, whose specifications are currently being worked out. Flight tests will begin in 2015.

Yury Zaitsev is an academic adviser at the Russian Academy of Engineering Sciences. This article is reprinted by permission of RIA Novosti. The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.

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.

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