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Russia’s anti-asteroid project to cost ‘dozens of billions of rubles’ — scientist

The would take about a decade to be implemented

MOSCOW, June 15. /TASS/. The implementation of Russia’s project to counter the threat of asteroids and comets will cost several dozens of billions of rubles, a senior research fellow at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Astronomy Institute, Sergei Naroyenkov, has told TASS.

"This is a long-term program, with a period of at least ten years, because new observatories need to be built and equipped with modern wide-angle telescopes to monitor the near-earth space, and special software should be created. The overall budget of the program to counter threats from space should be counted in dozens of billions of rubles," he said.

He said that a similar program was drafted in 2008-2009, but it was not implemented.

The asteroid threat detection system, designed in 2008, envisaged building three telescopes and a data processing center on the ground, as well as sending two telescopes to space within the period of ten years and at the cost of about 50 billion rubles (over $776 million at the current exchange rate), space launches included.