The days of their cold war may have passed, but Russia and the United States are in the midst of another battle -- this one a technological fight over the United States monopoly on satellite navigation.
Sergei Ivanov, Russia's defence minister, says all security restrictions on the country's GLONASS satellite navigation system will be lifted on 1 January to promote economic development.
President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that Russia was concerned about foreign nations planning to deploy weapons in space and developing armaments he called destabilizing.
The RF Defense Ministry has been left with no spy satellite in orbit. The last anchor of Russia's surveillance, US-PU satellite of electronic intelligence, moved down from the orbit at night from Friday to Saturday, as the service life of that satellite, which took off from Baikonur May 2004, came to a natural end.
A Russian telecommunications satellite in geostationary orbit failed March 29 following what its builder says was a "sudden external impact" of undetermined origin. The satellite, Express-AM11, is being moved into a graveyard orbit before on-board temperatures render it uncontrollable.
A Russian company is using anti-satellite weapons technology developed by the Soviet Union to launch microsatellites using a MiG 31. The Soviet Union developed the ability to launch an anti-satellite missile from a fighter jet in response to U.S. tests with an F-15 in 1985.
James Oberg discusses Russia's recent loss of an advanced spy satellite, their frantic search for the crash site, and the impact of this loss for Russian intelligence and early warning systems.
The United States and Russia are close to finalizing a memorandum of understanding on jointly building and operating two experimental satellites to track ballistic missile launches.
The article presents an overview of the history of development and the current status of the Soviet and Russian early-warning system, which was built to provide the Soviet strategic forces with information about a missile attack in an event of a nuclear conflict with the United States. Two main components of this system are considered?the network of early-warning radars and the space-based early-warning system, which includes satellites on highly-elliptical and geosynchronous orbits. The system appears to be capable of detecting a massive attack, but cannot be relied upon to detect individual missile launches.
Since 1992, American and Russian scientists have been quietly sketching out a space-based missile watching satellite system. This cooperative project may take on more urgency given U.S. terrorist attacks and the White House stay-the-course attitude in working on anti-ballistic missile defensive measures.