KYIV. Oct 8 (Interfax-AVN) - Ukraine and Russia plan an agreement in cooperation on the use and modernization of Russia's Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS) and may sign it early next year, deputy head of the Ukrainian National Space Agency Eduard Kuznetsov said on Thursday.
"It is not our [the Ukrainian and Russian space agencies'] fault that the signature of the agreement is being put off. Everything has been agreed. I think it will be signed very soon. Possibly early next year," Kuznetsov told Interfax.
"We are making efforts, both Ukraine and the Russian Federation, to ensure that all the space technologies we are working on today should have an applied character. The main emphasis in the implementation of the project will be put on consumer services," he said.
Ukraine has been getting ready to sign the planned accord since 2008.
Some experts believe GLONASS and the emergent European global satellite navigation system Galileo can become mutually supplementary.
The European Union signed an agreement with Ukraine in December 2005 on cooperation in bringing Galileo into being. The accord was ratified by the Ukrainian parliament in 2007 and has also been ratified by 17 of the EU's 27 member countries.
Today Galileo comprises only two satellites, and the deadline for the planned enlargement of the system's group of satellites to 30 has been put back several years. GLONASS consists of 19 satellites, and another six satellites (of the GLONASS-M type) are to join the group before the end of 2009.