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Russian space centre profiled ahead of French president's visit

Posted on: Saturday, 3 April 2004, 06:00 CST

Text of report by Russian news agency ITAR-TASS

Moscow, 3 April: Straight from the airport, French President Jacques Chirac headed for the closed town of Krasnoznamensk, near Moscow. He will be the first Western leader to visit the secret Main Spacecraft Test and Control Centre. The centre bears the name of [Soviet cosmonaut] German Titov and is operated by the Space Forces.

The centre's staff calculate and track the orbits of all space and other craft launched from Russia's space centres. The centre first began to monitor space in October 1957, when the first artificial satellite of the planet Earth was taken into orbit. It has done so ever since. Since then, more than 2,900 carrier rockets have blasted off from Russia's space centres, and more than 3,300 spacecraft have been launched.

To date, its 47th year in existence, the centre's staff have established and maintained contact with unmanned and manned spacecraft and space stations on more than eight million occasions.

The centre supports the launches of spacecraft to add to those that are already in orbit and of intercontinental ballistic missiles, as well as the landings of re-entry modules from reconnaissance and topographic support satellites. Here, missions are accomplished in the development and use of spacecraft for space reconnaissance and missile attack warning.

The centre now boasts an array of unique highly automated and extremely precise multirole radiotechnical and radioelectronic equipment, whose range extends to hundreds of millions of kilometres. The centre controls 80 per cent of Russian military- purpose, dual-use and civilian spacecraft.

The centre participates in all joint international space projects, in theoretical research into remote space and in the implementation of space programmes with relevance to national security. In cooperation with representatives of more than 150 organizations, scientific research institutes, design bureaus and space centres, more than 250 types of spacecraft have been flight- tested.

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