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23 July 2020, 17:26

Decision to extend service life of Belarusian satellite BKA expected in H2 2021

MINSK, 23 July (BelTA) – The decision on whether the service life of the Belarusian remote Earth sensing satellite BKA should be extended or not will be made in H2 2021, BelTA learned from Chairman of the Presidium of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus Vladimir Gusakov in an interview.

In his words, the technical state of the satellite allows one to expect it will keep working till the end of 2021. All the onboard systems operate well. The satellite performs all the functions properly. The decision to extend its service life past 2021 will be made approximately in H2 2021 after analyzing the satellite's state, Vladimir Gusakov said.

BKA was inserted into orbit in 2012. Such satellites are designed to last for five years. “Its operation till the end of 2021 is virtually equal to launching a second satellite of the kind. In other words, we've saved the cost of an entire satellite,” the official said.

The new satellite is in development. The Belarusian-Russian satellite for the remote sensing of Earth will boast spatial resolution of 0.35 meters (BKA's is 2 meters). The initial design stage is nearly finished. Depending on its results, the satellite's final technical parameters, development time, launch time, and cost of the work will be clarified. “The new satellite will surpass the existing satellite in such main parameters as the resolution of images and performance. It will have an improved stereo photography mode and a new video recording mode. The new satellite will allow accomplishing a number of new tasks for the sake of ensuring national security and monitoring territories in Belarus and surrounding lands,” Vladimir Gusakov pointed out.

The new satellite will help inventory natural resources, industrial infrastructure and housing and utilities infrastructure, help control their construction, help monitor processes in agriculture, forestry industry, fish industry, water industry, and other branches of the national economy. The new satellite will help make and update topographic maps with the scale of up to 1:25000 and city layouts with the scale of up to 1:10000. The new satellite will contribute to the creation of general geographic maps, thematic maps, and digital landscape models, will help monitor pollution and degradation of the environment, will help monitor various emergencies.

In 2003 the head of state authorized the creation of a space satellite and the Belarusian system for the remote sensing of Earth powered by the satellite. BKA was launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome, Kazakhstan on 22 July 2012. It became part of a constellation of satellites together with the Russian satellite Canopus-V No.1. In January 2020 the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus and the Russian state corporation Roscosmos signed an agreement on expanding capabilities of this satellite constellation by leveraging resources of the Russian satellites Canopus-V No.3, 4, 5, and 6 and the satellite Canopus-V-IK.

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