MOSCOW, November 3 - Russian and Chinese military and civil rockets and spacecraft have begun to be equipped with devices of the global navigation satellite system (GLONASS).
"Equipping carrier rockets, propulsion units and spacecraft will allow substantially increasing the effectiveness of spacecraft control at all segments of the flight and decreasing the spending on the ground complex," an official of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roskosmos) told Itar-Tass on Thursday.
GLONASS equipment of new spacecraft is part of civil and military space exploration, he said.
The Russian government has approved a federal space program for 2006-2015, in which special attention is given to the GLONASS system.
Russia?s satellite navigation system that now includes 14 craft is to be increased to 18 by 2007.
New-generation satellites Glonass-M and Glonass-K with the operation life of 7 and 10 years will be added to the orbital grouping within three years.
"The use of such satellites will allow providing navigation information to an unlimited number of users at any point of the earth and increasing the precision of determining coordinates of an object to one metres, the Roskosmos official said.
Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov earlier said that about 10 percent of Russia?s military budget for 2006 was slated for space.
"A priority will given to completing the deployment of the global positioning system," he said.
Russian Space Troops plan launching three new satellites of the GLONASS system on December 28.
According to the federal program Global Navigation System, 24 satellites are to be deployed in orbit by 2010.
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