India to get access to GLONASS

India and Russia on Tuesday signed an agreement to share high-precision signals from the Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS) for defence as well as civilian use. The agreement was signed on the sidelines of the Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's Indian visit.

As per the agreement, Russia will provide access to the GLONASS high-precision navigation signals to India. Russia currently has a total of 26 GLONASS satellites in orbit, of which 23 are operational. GLONASS is the Russian equivalent of the United States' global positioning system that allows users to determine a near precise position of any object to within metres.

Notably, in March this year, the Russian Federal Space Agency Roscosmos, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and Russian Navigation Information Systems (NIS) GLONASS signed a ‘Memorandum of Cooperation'. Later, representatives from NIS-GLONASS and ISRO's commercial arm, Antrix Corporation, agreed to set up a joint venture providing navigation and information services on the GLONASS/GPS platform.

Reviews progress

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Mr. Medvedev also reviewed the progress made in bilateral scientific and technological cooperation. “They expressed satisfaction at the extension of the Integrated Long-Term Program (ILTP) for scientific and technical cooperation for another decade and its focus on identifying innovation-led technology programmes,” an official statement said.

“Creation of new and innovative technologies would be at the heart of the respective economic modernisation programmes in the two countries. Continuous efforts would be made to identify programmes that would be built on the existing linkages between Indian and Russian scientific establishments. The new Indian-Russian Science and Technology Centre would facilitate such programmes,” the statement added.