Business news

MOSCOW, 30 June (BelTA-TASS) – Roscosmos Director General Igor Komarov and Chairman of the Presidium of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus Vladimir Gusakov have signed a memorandum of intent to create a Belarusian-Russian satellite for the remote sensing of Earth, BelTA has learned.

According to the source, Belarusian and Russian companies will team up to create the satellite. Belarus will make surveying instruments while Roscosmos will take care of creating the platform and inserting the satellite into orbit.

The project will be implemented within the framework of the Belarusian-Russian agreement on cooperation in studying and using outer space for peaceful purposes. The document was signed on 26 December 2012.

The rough design of the satellite was approved on 12 May 2017. After signing the memorandum Roscosmos and the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus will take care of details such as the creation, application, and evaluation of the export potential of the satellite.

The satellite will become part of the existing Belarusian-Russian orbital group of satellites, which boast high-resolution remote Earth sensing capabilities. Satellite data and satellite control will be shared in accordance with the distributed resources. In the past Belarus and Russia created a Belarusian-Russian ground infrastructure for controlling the Belarusian satellite BKA and the Russian satellite Canopus-B as well as a system for receiving and processing data from them.

The new satellite is likely to be inserted into orbit in late 2020. The platform will be made by the Russian corporation VNIIEM. In its time the Russian corporation made the first Belarusian satellite BKA, which was inserted into its orbit using the Baikonur space launch facility in 2012 and is still in use. The Belarusian company Peleng made surveying equipment for the satellite with the resolution of 0.5m.