ST. PETERSBURG, June 3. /TASS/. Work on the schematic design of Russia’s future orbital service station (ROSS) will begin in the near future, the CEO of space corporation Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, told TASS on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.
"I believe, by the end of the summer," Rogozin said, when asked if the orbiter will begin to be designed this year.
Rogozin said that a report with a road map for creating the ROSS would be submitted to the government in the near future. The main experiments would be staged not inside the station, but on the outer surface. "In fact, the station will be a platform for clusters of add-on monitoring and signal relay apparatuses," he said.
The ROSS’s sun-synchronous orbit will have an inclination of 97-98 degrees in relation to the equator. It will scan the whole of the Earth’s surface every two days and see the Arctic Region every 90 minutes, which is crucial to provide support for navigation along the Northern Sea Route.
"The yet-to-be created space station will be far more pragmatic. We would like to have it," Rogozin said.
The St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, organized by Roscongress Foundation, is being held on June 2-5. This year’s theme is "Together Again - Economy of New Reality". The forum is being held offline with all epidemiological precautions observed. TASS is the information partner and the official photo hosting agency of the forum.