Russia’s state space company, Roscosmos, announced Sept. 27 that Russia and China have signed contracts for each to set up three stations of their satellite navigation systems in the other country, thus allowing closer cooperation between the two, Russia’s GLONASS and China’s Beidou System (BDS), which provide the same functions as the American GPS.
“Used simultaneously, the Russian and Chinese systems—GLONASS and Beidou—will increase the accuracy and reliability of navigation,” Roscosmos CEO Yury Borisov stated, which is why the two countries are interested in wider cooperation between both the systems, and “the navigation technologies based on them.” In reporting the news, TASS noted that possible cooperation between the two systems might encompass communication and surveillance had been mooted in July by Roscosmos’s former head, Dmitry Rogozin.
Russia’s GLONASS stations are to be located in Changchun, Urumqi and Shanghai, and the Chinese ones, in Obninsk, Irkutsk and Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Roscosmos announced.
The two countries signed the 2021-2025 Russian-Chinese Roadmap for Cooperation in Satellite Navigation on November 29, 2021, “which includes plans for the integrated and innovative development of GLONASS and BDS,” Global Times had reported at the time.
