Russia plans to put a dozen of new communications satellites into the Earth's orbit in the next nine years, the head of the country's communications agency Rossvyaz said Thursday.

"A program has been laid out on how to expand the civil satellite constellation in 2017-2025. Under it, we plan to launch seven satellites into the geostationary orbit and four into the highly-elliptical orbit," Oleg Dukhovnitsky said at a Satellite Russia conference in Moscow.

The Rossvyaz chief added that "paperwork is already being prepared for five devices," which will be launched in 2019-2020.

Russia's space agency Roscosmos said earlier that a total of 44 satellites would be put into orbit by 2025, including for military and scientific purposes. The program's federal budget is worth 87.4 billion rubles ($1.3 billion).

Russia Opens 4th Monitoring Station in Brazil to Operate GLONASS Satellites
A fourth monitoring station responsible for the proper operation of Russia's GLONASS satellite navigation network has opened in Brazil, the Russian space agency Roscosmos said Thursday.

The ground stations are used to trace signals from the GLONASS constellation as well as those of similar networks - GPS, Galileo and Compass. The input is then processed and transmitted to the global analytic center for high-precision information.

GLONASS is a global positioning system operated by the Russian Aerospace Defense Forces. It consists of 28 satellites, allowing real-time positioning and speed data for surface, sea and airborne objects around the world.

Source: Sputnik News