Over $2m worth of BKA satellite images sold to Belarus’ ministries

Belarusian ministries have purchased over $2 million worth of images from the Belarusian Space Vehicle (BKA), Head of Office of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus (NASB) Piotr Vityaz told reporters on 22 July, BelTA has learnt.

Nine Belarusian ministries have bought the images from the BKA. “The country has created a network for high-speed reception and special-purpose processing of space information,” Piotr Vityaz said.

A number of agreements have been signed with foreign partners. “We are accumulating the images to sell them to foreign partners. We have already signed an agreement worth $2 million,” Piotr Vityaz noted.

The Belarusian satellite for the remote sensing of the Earth was launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, on 22 July 2012. The BKA, jointly with the Russian Canopus-B satellite, were put in a 500-520km orbit by the booster-vehicle Soyuz and the space tug Fregat. The BKA is designed to make high-resolution photographs of the Earth. Optoelectronic system for the satellite was created by the Belarusian enterprises, Peleng and the United Institute of Informatics Problems of the NASB. The rest of the equipment was produced in Russia and the UK.

The first images from the BKA satellite were received on 29 August 2012.