NOVO-OGARYOVO. April 8 (Interfax-AVN) - Russian specialists predicted a powerful earthquake in Japan hours before it struck, Yuri Urlichich, General Director of the Russian Space Systems company, said on Thursday.
"Seven hours before the first tremor on March 8 we had predicted possible cataclysms," he said during a meeting hosted by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in his Novo-Ogaryovo residence.
This became possible thanks to the Earth's ionosphere monitoring data, Urlichich said.
A few years ago, the European Space Agency chose Russian Space Systems as a co-participant in a space-based earthquake prediction program, he said.
General Director of the Central Research Institute of Machine-Building Gennady Raykunov agreed that there exists a "correlation" between geophysical processes in the near-Earth space and subsequent catastrophes on Earth.
Earthquake prediction experiments have been performed aboard the International Space Station in cooperation with Roscosmos, he said.