Russia Pumps Funds into GLONASS

The Russian news service, RIA Novosti, reports that the Russian government has decided to devote a total sum of 67 billion rubles equivalent to $2.6 billion to enable further development and improvement of its GLONASS as might be required.

This was announced by the Russian Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, during a meeting with Sergei Ivanov, deputy prime minister who is responsible for state policies relating to industry development, defense, nuclear, and space industries and transportation. Ivanov said that the majority of the $2.6 billion would be devoted to acquiring additional new satellites to the GLONASS constellation in order to meet up with the terrestrial demands.

This became necessary to meet up with the Russian Space Agency (Roscosmos) plans to increase the current number of GLONASS satellites from 16 to 30 by 2011. While GLONASS now has 16 satellites in orbit, one is in a decommissioning phase, while two others are undergoing maintenance, leaving 13 operationally healthy. Another amount equivalent to ($1.8 billion) has been set aside to meet up with the country's space program.

This year budget for the GLONASS is considerably huge compared with previous years' allocations. In 2007, about $418.25 million equivalent was allocated to the project and a lower rate of $200 million was devoted in 2006 by the Russian federal budget.

The news also predicted that more funds would be budgeted in the nearest future in order to meet up with the scheduled plans.