MOSCOW, May 24. /TASS/. Russia's initiative to launch its Milky Way project this year to ensure the safety of near-Earth space drew a lot of interest from other countries, the Russian Space Agency (Roscosmos) Chief Yury Borisov said on Friday.

"Russia’s proposal to create a global monitoring system in outer space to determine the danger of both natural and artificial objects aroused genuine interest," Borisov said in an interview with Russia’s Rossiya-24 television channel.

"We are talking here about protection against [space] debris, against asteroids. This kind of system can only be set up as a global system," he added.

Roscosmos Executive Director for Long-Term Programs and Science Alexander Bloshenko said earlier in the week at a meeting of BRICS space agency chiefs that Russia intended to launch the Milky Way project this year to ensure space activity safety in near-Earth space.

The updated automated warning system will consist of 65 telescopes, and a space segment. As Bloshenko told TASS earlier, the space segment will be made up of a cluster of specialized near-Earth space monitoring satellites. The launch of the first satellite is scheduled for 2027.