Putin, Chirac meet Russian space centre officers

Text of report by Russian news agency ITAR-TASS

Krasnoznamensk (Moscow Region), 3 April: Russian and French Presidents Vladimir Putin and Jacques Chirac have met the shift on duty – Russian Space Forces personnel – at the Main Spacecraft Test and Control Centre.

At the secret Space Forces centre near Moscow, a shift of eight duty officers – the shift leader and his deputies, each with responsibility for the operation of a particular type of spacecraft – were introduced to the presidents.

First the head of the centre, Nikolay Kolesnikov, told the heads of state about the electronic screen which displays information about the sequence of operations by the shift with various satellite systems. The screen shows which operations have been completed and which are still in progress.

Then Kolesnikov was joined by Defence Minister Sergey Ivanov. Together, they explained the information displayed at that precise moment by the two main screens in the main hall of the test centre. One of them showed data about the meteorological and heliographic situation all over Russia today, and the other – the radioelectronic situation.

The French president, who said he was amazed by what he saw, congratulated the officers on their “splendid work”.

Then the Space Forces commander, Vladimir Popovkin, presented Jacques Chirac with a book about the life of the Space Forces and a glass ball which contained inside a representation of the planet Earth and a spacecraft in orbit around it.

The French president was also given another symbolic gift: a glass case with a model of a space rocket inside. The rocket will be in production “very soon, this year”, the Space Forces officer said. At the base of the rocket is a map which marks the positions of Moscow and Paris.