Belarus-Russia tighter cooperation in space projects encouraged

Belarus should put more efforts into participation in outer space exploration projects together with Russia, BelTA learned from academician Piotr Vityaz, Chief of Staff of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus.

“We are interested in our companies, for instance, Integral, putting more efforts into joint space projects taking into account the peculiarities of today’s Russia. It will give Russia support in import substitution efforts,” noted Piotr Vityaz.

In his words, among other things Belarus is interested in cooperation in engineering instruments for researchers and in robot technologies. “These are projects of Integral as well as Peleng, Planar, NPO Center and a dozen of other companies,” he said. Piotr Vityaz reminded that the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus and the Federal Space Agency of Russia (Roscosmos) had signed an agreement on cooperation. A joint working group was created in May 2014.

In turn, Head of Roscosmos’ Strategic Planning Office Yuri Makarov mentioned the effectiveness of Belarus-Russia cooperation in the implementation of joint space programs. Two programs of the Union State of Belarus and Russia are in progress now. One is dedicated to the harmonization of the space industry standards that exist in the Russian Federation and Belarus. The other one has started this year and continues the research that the Union State program Cosmos began. It is designed to create spacecraft components and technologies for the sake of implementing Belarusian and Russian national programs among other things, explained the Roscosmos representative.

Asked about prospects, Yuri Makarov remarked that the Union State program Technologies has the highest readiness state. The program is supposed to secure technological advances for the sake of creating spacecraft. A concept of the program has been prepared and has been approved by the Russian and Belarusian sides. “Now only financial block ministries are supposed to give their go-ahead,” said the official. Five concepts of Union State programs are in development. They are dedicated to joint efforts in the area of the remote sensing of the Earth and information technologies. Some other programs involve the integration of the space potential that Belarus has. “There are interesting proposals in the area of education programs. We suggest the participation of the Belarusian State University in this regard,” said the Head of the Strategic Planning Office of Roscosmos.

A session of the Belarusian-Russian working group on preparing proposals regarding the list and content of promising programs of the Union State of Belarus and Russia and the development of cooperation between organizations and enterprises of the Russian Space Agency and the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus is scheduled to take place in the Academy on 27-28 August.