Arkhangelsk to Undergo Satellite Survey

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Concatenated JPRS Reports, 1991

Document 10 of 10

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED Status: [STAT]

Document Date: 17 Mar 91 Category: [CAT]

Report Type: JPRS Report Report Date:

Report Number: JPRS-TEN-91-007 UDC Number:

Headline: Arkhangelsk To Undergo Satellite Survey

Source Line: LD1703115391 Moscow All-Union Radio Mayak Nework in Russian 0640 GMT 17 Mar 91

FULL TEXT OF ARTICLE:

1. [Text] [Announcer] The Cosmodrome and the Far North is the subject of a report by our correspondent, Valentin Bogomolov.

2. [Bogomolov] On clear, cloudless nights the citizens of Arkhangelsk sometimes see rockets rising into the sky above the city. Occasionally they are mistaken for UFOs but, at all events, everybody here knows that the world's busiest space launch site, Plesetsk, lies right next door to Arkhangelsk. But what benefit do Arkhangelsk Oblast and the Far North, which lie under the rockets' flight path, derive from the Cosmodrome? This is the question we put to Col. Grin, one of its commanders

3. [Begin recording] [Grin] Recently we launched the Informator spacecraft. This is the first experiment in a series intended to test ways of maintaining communications with remote regions of the country, with settlements, with geological prospecting teams, with those regions and installations within the country where the use of traditional means of communication is inappropriate and economically unviable.

4. Recently, at the end of December, we signed an agreement on the launch of the Resurs spacecraft, which is designed to survey the earth's mineral resources and carry out ecological monitoring. In other words, it will carry out a comprehensive survey of Arkhangelsk Oblast in the interests of the national economy. It will study the location of mineral resources, the use of timber resources, and the ecological situation in Arkhangelsk Oblast.

5. [Bogomolov] I know that geologists are obliged to acquire satellite charts from the Americans. Can't they see your space photographs?

6. [Grin] Of course they can. Furthermore, as a deputy in the oblast soviet, I took part in this work. Maps compiled from satellite measurements, including ones of other oblasts of the Soviet Union, were displayed at a session of the oblast soviet. Some of these measurements were taken during orbits over oblasts which neighbor