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Northern Sea Route to be covered by Russian satellites in 2 years, minister reports

At a meeting with the institute's representatives, Alexey Chekunkov discussed how Russian scientists need to be fully independent from Western technologies in monitoring the ice situation on the Northern Sea Route

ST. PETERSBURG, June 6. /TASS/. The navigation along the Northern Sea Route (NSR) will be fully provided with operational and high-quality ice situation information from the Russian satellite group within the next two years, as these satellites are launched, Minister for Development of the Far East and Arctic Alexey Chekunkov told reporters during a working trip to the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute (AARI) in St. Petersburg on Monday.

"Earlier, we have witnessed certain shifts in timing, and <…> just a few days ago Russia launched Kondor-FKA, <...> this is only the beginning of a big work to deploy a satellite group," the minister said. "I hope that within the next two years we will be able to offer high-quality online information on ice conditions. This work is controlled most closely."

At a meeting with the institute's representatives, the minister discussed how Russian scientists need to be fully independent from Western technologies in monitoring the ice situation on the Northern Sea Route. The direct access to domestic satellite data is one of the basic tasks that needs to be solved in the near future, he added.

Earlier, Maxim Kulinko of Rosatom's division managing the Northern Sea Route, told the POLAR-2023 conference at AARI that at the moment Russian researchers largely depended on databases of Western counterparts, who had been consistently reducing access for Russians, thus increasing significant risks.

The Kondor-FKA high-resolution radar satellite was launched on May 27 from the Vostochny pad (in the Amur Region). The Kondor is a series of small Earth’s remote sensing satellites developed by the Research and Production Association of Machine-Building to carry out the Earth’s mapping, environmental monitoring and the prospecting of natural resources. Two Kondor satellites were put into orbit in 2013 - 2014.

According to the designers, the next satellite's launch is planned for June, 2024. The group's satellites will be able to receive detailed images with a resolution of up to 1 meter in any weather and at any time and to survey the earth's surface in a band of up to 120 kilometers.

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