MOSCOW. Feb 19 (Interfax) - Russia is preparing to ratify a space cooperation agreement with Tajikistan that envisages the deployment of Russian space surveillance stations in Tajik territory.
A draft of the federal bill has been published on the website of draft legislative acts.
According to the explanatory note, the agreement was drafted and signed "in furtherance of the steady trend of broadening cooperation" between Russia and Tajikistan in space through the planned joint projects to deploy a ground-based complex for receiving, processing and archiving Earth remote sensing (ERS) data and an optical-electronic complex for warning about dangerous situations in near-Earth space in Tajik territory."
"The main area of cooperation is the introduction and use of Russian space technologies to achieve current economic, social and scientific targets and to boost the effectiveness of managing sites and resources in various fields of economic activity in Tajikistan," the document said.
The note identifies remote sensing, communication, television services, the use of navigation and data technologies via the Glonass global navigation satellite system, and fundamental and applied space research as priorities of Russian-Tajik cooperation.