Russian GLONASS to be finished ahead of schedule

At a session with the Russian government, President Vladimir Putin demanded on Monday that the space-based navigation system GLONASS be finished ahead of schedule and launched into commercial operation as soon as possible.

It was brought to the government’s notice “that the GLONASS system should be designed within a shorter period of time, ahead of the initial plan to finish it by the year 2008,” the president noted. “We have such possibilities, let us see what can be done in 2006-2007,” the president told the Cabinet.

The Russian president insists it must be put into commercial operation as soon as possible.

“Already at this point of time, it is necessary to envisage who will use that system and how intensively,” the president noted. “Some Russian enterprises and even Russian regions have already signed contracts and are using the global positioning system GPS,” Itar-Tass quoted Putin as saying.

V.Y.