BAIKONUR. Sept 17 (Interfax-AVN) - Kazakhstan continues work to develop an own Earth remote-sensing satellite, Kazkosmos state company's Vice President Meirbek Moldabekov told Interfax-AVN.
"We are going to have an own Earth remote sensing system, for which the competition has been announced to develop two remote sensing satellites, one with high resolution and the other with medium resolution," he said.
The competition will involve Russian TSKB-Progress company, the Khrunichev center, the Energia rocket and space company, and the R&D institute of space instrument building. "Some other foreign satellite manufacturers may also take part," he said, noting that the requirements to the satellites have been specified, the competition announces, and the first satellite is to be launched in 2010.
The first satellites will be made by foreign companies, he went on, but the contract with the winning bidder will be signed on condition that cadre training will be provided to Kazakhstan, so that in future the country could run an own design bureau and develop and produce satellites on its own.
Work is underway to develop a Kazakh seismic satellite, which is an important job, because there quite many seismic risks in the country, including Almaty.
Kazakhstan is willing to deploy an own facility to develop and build satellites in Baikonur, because this would help solve cadre-training issues as well. However, this is not the ultimate objective, because the main idea is to be able to deliver the information obtained in space to ground operators and consumers, for which specialized software and hardware should be in place.
The first KazSat telecommunication satellite was launched from Baionur, leased by Russia since 1994, last year, and now work is in progress to launch more satellites with the assistance of Russia.