Early in December, Jean-Jacques Dordin, director of the European Space Agency, assured Roskosmos during negotiations in Moscow that the agency was committed to space cooperation with Russia. Also in December, an additional agreement about cooperation on the International Space Station is expected to be signed with NASA. Earlier, the United States lifted restrictions on the American space agency's purchases of Russian space rockets.

Such is the brief chronicle of the latest events, which testify to the solid reputation of Russia's space industry in the world.

As we see, Russian cosmonautics does not rest on past laurels, and, despite a squeezed budget, is not only making extensive use of its existing hardware, but is also looking toward the future.

The best example of it is a series of Monitor Earth remote sensing (ERS) satellites.

On Aug. 26, a converted Rokot launch vehicle delivered a new Monitor-E satellite into orbit. But almost immediately problems plagued its command module, with ground information failing to reach the spacecraft, which went into an uncontrolled tumbling motion. However, mission controllers from the Khrunichev Space Center saved the satellite.

The Monitor-E marks a landmark for the center in a new operational area for it -- development of advanced space systems for hands-on applications. For the first time in world practice of environmental monitoring it has offered a small-sized spacecraft that can perform no worse than a larger unit.

Initially, the idea was to make the project a commercial venture, and indeed, at first the center financed it out of its own pocket. But as the development work was nearing completion, Roskosmos, seeing the need for restoring Russia's formation of ERS satellites that have reached critical condition over recent years, decided to include the Monitor-E into the federal space program with appropriate funding.

Seventy percent of the Monitor-E's information capacity will belong to Roskosmos to meet the requirements of Russia's official consumers, and 30 percent to the Khrunichev Center to be used for commercial purposes.

The Monitor-E represents a new generation of spacecraft with intelligent on-board systems. Its configuration is non-sealed and modular, which has cut lead-time, and it is equipped with two optical-electronic cameras giving a resolution of 8 and 20 meters.

The unified Yakhta space platform developed at the Center is its mother ship. The weight of the craft is 750 kilograms. Practically all service and utility systems of the unit are new Russian developments.

"A spacecraft is considered a new model if 30% of its on-board systems are new," noted Inessa Glazkova, the center's deputy general director. "Now the Monitor-E is 90 percent new." By 2010, Russia's orbiting formation of ERS satellites is to number a minimum of 10 spacecraft, and small-sized Monitors will be one of its principal components.

Practice also suggests that the best results in Earth monitoring are obtained by combining (using jointly) images from different satellites that complement each other. Thus, pictures made by radar installed on a spacecraft can give important extra information to the pictures taken in the optical range, because radar observations are immune to weather conditions.

Insufficient illumination does not affect infra-red (thermal) filming. So, in addition to the Monitor-E, the formation should also include the new advanced craft Monitor-I (thermal), Monitor-S (stereo) and Monitor-O (high-resolution) provided with an assortment of optical electronic devices, and also the Monitor-R with onboard radar. A Rokot light-class carrier rocket will launch all of them.

A Monitor-based formation of ERS satellites, entirely new engineering solutions underlying it, and the regularity of Earth observations to fulfill tasks of environmental monitoring will enable the new Russian unit to be quite competitive on the world's ERS market.

(Andrei Kislyakov is a political commentator for the RIA Novosti news agency. This article is reprinted by permission of RIA Novosti.)

(United Press International's "Outside View" commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of United Press International. In the interests of creating an open forum, original submissions are invited.)

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