ST. PETERSBURG, May 18. /TASS/. Only 27% of Russia's navigators are able to determine the coordinates of a ship by the stars using a sextant, say results of a study conducted by St. Petersburg's Association of Polar Explorers. The world's first astronavigation simulator, created by Russian scientists and approved by the national Maritime Register, is designed to fill the gap, the Association's First Vice President Platon Staroverov told TASS.

"We have conducted a study to find whether all modern navigators can tell directions by the stars, we have just asked them, and 27 percent said they could. Who are these 27 percent? They all are navigators with extensive work experience who received education at the time when navigational astronomy was taught in detail. Nowadays, the subject's range has been cut," he said.

In conditions of developing electronic warfare (EW), satellite signals, to which modern navigators are accustomed, may be suppressed, and ships literally "go blind," which is especially critical in the Arctic, where maneuvers are limited due to ice and shoals, he continued. An alternative method is to use astronavigation - a sextant, which traditionally provides low accuracy (several miles), but specialists at the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of Applied Astronomy have created an electronic prefix for sextants to use digital format with an accuracy of more than 17 times higher. Along with a special program to calculate stars' ephemeris, the coordinates of a vessel may be determined with sufficient accuracy for safe navigation along the Northern Sea Route, even in complete absence of satellite signals.

Based on this development, engineers have created the world's first astronomy navigation simulator, which has passed tests and has been approved by the Russian Maritime Register.

"We wish this simulator were included in training courses for Nakhimov cadets and for everyone connected with the sea," the association's representative added, stressing the Arctic was becoming a "hotspot" of geopolitical interests and it was a matter of national security to train navigators to work in conditions of satellite navigation suppression.