Russia, India Cooperate on Space Exploration, Glonass Satellite System

Russia and India share cooperation in the space sector, including manned space exploration and Russia's global navigation satellite system known as GLONASS, a senior Russian space corporation official told Sputnik.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Kravchenko, who also chairs the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Youth Council, singled out projects relating to the joint use of GLONASS and joint manufacturing of the system's encode/decode modules as areas of particular interest.

"Our countries can collaborate on a number of projects," Denis Kravchenko, deputy general director of the United Rocket and Space Corporation (URSC), told Sputnik.

Designed to supplant the US Global Positioning System (GPS), the GLONASS network currently fields 28 satellites, 24 of which are operational.

As member and observer of SCO, the Eurasian political, economic and military partnership group, Russia and India must contribute to projects of mutual interest in areas where each nation is unable to succeed on its own, Kravchenko said.

India has four navigation satellites known as IRNSS of its own. IRNS-1A, its first satellite, was launched in 2013. In 2015 the Indian Space Agency expects to launch an additional three satellites to round out its network.

SCO was founded in 2001 in Shanghai by the leaders of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.

Its leaders submitted a joint declaration last year opposing a space arms race.