Russia’s global satellite navigation system will become available for civilian clients in Russia starting next year and open for other users worldwide two years later, Russia’s defense minister said on Tuesday.
Sergei Ivanov said that Russia’s Global Navigation Satellite System, known as GLONASS, will be offered to foreign clients worldwide in 2009, the ITAR-Tass, Interfax and RIA Novosti news agencies reported.
“It will have an enormous commercial importance,” Ivanov said in televised remarks during a visit to NPO Reshetnyov company in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, which builds satellites for the program. “It will contribute to the national economy’s development in many spheres.”
GLONASS is the equivalent of the US Global Positioning System, or GPS.
Developed during the 1970s, the system originally had 24 satellites, but the number had dwindled, falling into the teens.
Thanks to Russia’s booming oil revenues, the government has earmarked funds to revive the system to its full strength. GLONASS now has 17 satellites, but two of them were temporarily out of order, ITAR-Tass said on Tuesday.
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