The Year in Review

With no breakthroughs during the first year of an ambitious government-approved federal space program that runs through 2015, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his government have been receiving additional resources; Russia has overhauled its telecommunications satellite cluster, while developing spacecraft for accomplishing socioeconomic objectives.

The country's 2006 accomplishments in its space program include:

• The re-activation of the 13-satellite GLONASS (Global Navigation Satellite System) cluster, which received two new GLONASS-M satellites with a five-year service life on August 31.
• Three more GLONASS-M spacecraft were to be launched on December 25, with another to lift off next year.
• The launch of the country's first Resurs-DK1 remote-sensing satellite, which was activated in September after three-month test flights. The Resurs-DK1 photographs from 280,000 to 466,000 square miles of the terrestrial surface per day with a resolution of three feet.

Russia also continues to operate the experimental small-size Monitor-E optoelectronic surveillance satellite, which uses panchromatic cameras with a resolution of 33-36 feet and spectral-zone cameras with a resolution of 72-82 feet to fill daily commercial orders.

As Russia has not launched any full-fledged scientific satellites this year, scientists have worked on analyzing the results of previous experiments and on conducting research aboard foreign spacecraft under international cooperation programs.

This year, Russia has continued to receive data from the Mars-Express and Venus-Express interplanetary probes, which make use of equipment made with active participation of Russian experts.

• The Mars probe discovered water on the planet in the form of subsurface ice, findings that imply water flowed on the Martian surface until only five years ago.
• The Venus-Express determined the deuterium-hydrogen ratio in the planet's upper atmosphere is 150 times higher than that in the Earth's atmosphere. The assumption is, therefore, that all water has vanished from the surface of Venus.

Stay tuned. Much to come between now and 2015.

FMI: http://en.rian.ru, http://en.rian.ru/science