Glonass update

Russia, China to set up pilot zone to test national navigation systems

Russia and China are set to establish a pilot zone to test the Russian GLONASS and Chinese BeiDou satellite navigation systems on passenger and freight transportation routes going through Kraskino – Hunchun and Poltavka – Dongning checkpoints on the border in Russia’s Primorsky Territory, the Russian Transport Ministry said.

The issue was discussed during a meeting of a bilateral working group on road transport and roads. The sides also discussed the possibility of opening a new international route going through Russia’s Novosibirsk, Irkutsk and Zabaykalsk cities and Chinese cities of Manzhouli, Yingkou and Dalian, according to the statement. https://sputniknews.com

Restrictions on buying foreign equipment for GLONASS

The Russian government has listed equipment for the GLONASS system as a foreign-made equipment that is restricted access for purchasing for state and municipal needs, the Cabinet of Ministers posted the report with Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s signature on its web site on Tuesday.

“Under the signed order, the GLONASS equipment, electronic warning system, electronic equipment for security and traffic control were added to this list due to the fact that micro schemes and modules for the GLONASS navigation equipment had been developed and studied in Russia, as well as the production of lighting facilities and its parts that compete with foreign analogs in their specifications,” the explanatory note to the document says.

The note says that the taken decision is aimed at increasing competitiveness of Russian products, reduction of the domestic market dependency on imported goods in the spheres of security and traffic control, as well as development of microelectronic products. http://tass.com/economy/955727

GLONASS proposed as early warning tsumani detection system

Signals sent by the GLONASS and GPS satellites have been suggested to be used for radar location of large waves in oceans, a report of the Conference on Current Aspects of Remote Sensing of Earth from Space says.

“The appearance of numerous navigation satellites made it viable to study the possible use of reflected navigation signals for radar location of the water and Earth’s surfaces,” the report says.

For this, it was proposed to look into the possible launch of a space object with a signal receiver for navigation systems and a multi-beam antenna into the near-Earth orbit (400 km above the Earth), so that signals reflected from the Earth’s surface could be received from ten or more navigation satellites. In this case, one satellite will be able to sense the whole Earth’s surface in twenty-four hours.This technology may be used to measure movement on the Earth’s surface, sea surface parameters, including unsafe sea monitoring and tsunami early warning, as well as the speed and direction of the wind over the sea surface, ice thickness in polar regions and monitoring object movements on the Earth’s surface. The report reiterates that the first experiments with bistatic radiolocation (in which a transmission unit and a receiver are located far from each other and move at different speeds regarding the studied object) of the Earth from space were carried out in Russia in 1989-1998 with the use of the Mir space station. Geostationary satellites radiated radio waves to the Earth, and the Mir station received the reflected signal. The outcome analysis showed the efficiency and potential of the suggested method of bistatic radiolocation. http://tass.com/science/956089