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Commissioning of GLONASS system may be postponed until early 2017

The director general of the Information Satellite Systems company however hopes the system will be commissioned in 2016

© Evgeniy Kurskov/TASS

KUBINKA (Moscow region), September 6. /TASS/. The commissioning of Russia’s GLONASS navigation system might be postponed until the beginning of 2017, Nikolai Testoyedov, the Director General of the Information Satellite Systems company, has told reporters.

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"We hope that the system will be commissioned by the end of this year. However, the situation is cumbersome, and our influence does not extend to all the procedures, so it could be postponed until the first quarter of 2017," he said.

The company head noted that the ground control segment has undergone ground tests and is ready to be delivered to its customer. In addition, the orbit group is fully operational. However, the Soyuz rocket and the Fregat upper stage have not been put into operation yet.

Testoyedov said at the end of July that the system would be fully ready to be commissioned by the end of the year. GLONASS was supposed to be delivered to the customer a few years ago, but the Russian Defense Ministry had a number of points of criticism at that time.

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