Russia to develop space collision warning system

Russia would spend 2.1 million U.S. dollars to build an automatic warning system to prevent collisions between spaceships, satellites and orbital debris, Russian space agency Roscosmos said Wednesday. According to the agency, the system will monitor space navigation and warn of potentially dangerous situations, such as when spaceships, satellites and their waste come too close to each other, or when a space object re-enters Earth's atmosphere uncontrolled. At the initial stage, the system, based on a 1.5-meter AZT-33BM telescope, will be capable of monitoring 30 space vehicles and raising an alarm at least 30 hours before the situation becomes dangerous. Roscosmos said it decided to build the early warning system after a Phobos-Grunt mission failed this January due to faulty propulsion units, which led to an uncontrolled re-entry. It would select a tenderer as the program's developer in November. "The latest event confirmed the necessity of developing the means and capabilities to clean up near-Earth space and the danger from artificial objects," Roscosmos told the Interfax news agency. The Phobos-Grunt probe, carrying China's Yinghuo-1 satellite, was launched last November but failed to reach the intended orbit. The spacecraft crashed into the Pacific Ocean on Jan. 15.