Article Posted on : - Feb 17, 2010

A file photo

MOSCOW (PTI): Prime Minister Vladimir Putin evinced interest in speeding up cooperation with India in the commercialisation of orbital navigation system GLONASS and said he intends to discuss it during his visit to New Delhi next month.

Russia has revived the Soviet era Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS) to end the monopoly of the US Pentagon-controlled Navstar marketed worldwide as GPS and has also agreed to provide India access to its military segment.

"We have quite good prospectus in international cooperation in GLONASS, specially with India and Kazakhstan," Putin said at a meeting with Vice Premier Sergei Ivanov on Tuesday, who looks after the GLONASS project.

"I hope that in the near future we will jointly start producing the necessary equipment and marketing GLONASS in these countries," Putin said in his televised remarks at the meeting and added that all the necessary agreements were already in place and he intends to discuss it with India.

Russia currently has a total of 22 GLONASS satellites in orbit out of which 16 are operational.

By the end of this year Russia plans to launch six satellites, including three next month, to expand the global footprint of GLONASS.

An orbital navigation system is meant to provide reliable positioning, navigation, and timing services to worldwide users on a continuous basis.