Russian technology application geography expanding

01 December 2008, 10:39am

2008-12-01 - Russian space data ground receiving station has been installed in Armenia. Small-size universal UniScan complexes, developed and manufactured by ScanEx Research & Development Center, have been used in 40 regional, departmental and national centers of Earth Remote Sensing. For 19 years of its operation ScanEx have supplied ground stations to 11 CIS countries and abroad. In October, Armenia complemented this impressive list.

Program for establishment of the Space Monitoring Center in Armenia became a leading Russian-Armenian project in sphere of space technology application. A Space Monitoring Center is to help resolving tasks in geodesy, land cadastre and cartography based on remote sensing data.

On March 31, Head of the Russian Federal Space Agency Anatoly Perminov and Chairman of the State Committee on Real-Estate Cadastre of Armenia Manuk Vardanyan concurred the plan on the creation of a Space Monitoring Center in Erevan, followed by signing the agreement. Main developer of this Space Monitoring Center is the Russian Institute of Space Device Engineering. Research Institute of Precision Instruments is the designer of the space data processing equipment. This institute supplied the firmware for synchronization, registration and processing of data, downlinked from the Russian Resurs-DK satellite.

The backbone of this Space Monitoring Center is the small-size «UniScan-24» ground receiving station, manufactured and installed in October by the ScanEx RDC specialists at the Center of Geodesy and Cartography of the State Committee on Real-Estate Cadastre at the government of the Republic of Armenia.

Until recently UniScan ground stations provided the reception of data from 14 RS satellites of world leading Operators from France, India, USA, Canada, Israel and Europe. The specifics of this UniScan-24 station, equipped with the firmware of Research Institute of Precision Instruments, is in its possibility to receive and process telemetry from Resurs-DK satellite – the first Russian 1 m resolution RS satellite. ScanEx Center successfully tested the data reception from Resurs-DK last year. Armenia is the first country, having UniScan-24 station with access to highly detailed images from Resurs-DK satellite.

For now, said the Center of Geodesy and Cartography CEO Osip Petrosyan, the UniScan-24 station has already been installed. Personal training and other prep-work is already ongoing.

This universal receiving complex, being part of the RS Center, will allow the Center of Geodesy and Cartography to resolve the following issues:

- creation of large-scale maps and lay-outs using traditional and digital methods;

- topo-geodesic activities in demarcation and delimitation of state borders and administrative entities;

- aerial survey and space imagery data processing;

- creation and introduction of governmental geo-information systems, etc.

"Technology of real-time acquisition, processing and storing of satellite data is developing rapidly and is in great demand worldwide", said ScanEx Vice-President Olga Gershenzon. "I’m really glad that our technology with access to the data of our national satellite has been applied now abroad."

ScanEx RDC

Geo: International