INNO V AT IO N The task of designing and developing the GLONASS GLONASS spacecraft fell to the Scientific Production Association of Applied Mechan­ ics (Nauchno Proizvodstvennoe Ob"edinenie Spacecraft Prikladnoi Mekaniki or NPO PM) , located near Krasnoyarsk in Siberia. This major aero­ Nicholas L. Johnson space industrial complex was established in 1959 as a division of Sergei Korolev 's Kaman Sciences Corporation Expe1imental Design Bureau (Opytno Kon­ struktorskoe Byuro or OKB). (Korolev , among other notable achievements , led the Fourteen years after the launch of the effort to develop the Soviet Union's first first test spacecraft, the Russian Global Nav­ launch vehicle - the A launcher - which igation Satellite System (Global 'naya Navi­ placed Sputnik 1 into orbit.) The founding gatsionnaya Sputnikovaya Sistema or and current general director and chief GLONASS) program remains viable and designer is Mikhail Fyodorovich Reshetnev, essentially on schedule despite the economic one of only two still-active chief designers and political turmoil surrounding the final from Russia's fledgling 1950s-era space years of the Soviet Union and the emergence program. of the Commonwealth of Independent States A closed facility until the early 1990s, (CIS). By the summer of 1994, a total of 53 NPO PM has been responsible for all major GLONASS spacecraft had been successfully Russian operational communications, navi­ Despite the significant economic hardships deployed in nearly semisynchronous orbits; gation, and geodetic satellite systems to associated with the breakup of the Soviet Union of the 53 , nearly 12 had been normally oper­ date. Serial (or assembly-line) production of and the transition to a modern market economy, ational since the establishment of the Phase I some spacecraft, including Tsikada and Russia continues to develop its space programs, constellation in 1990. With the commission­ GLONASS , has been transferred to the Flight albeit at a reduced level compared with that of ing of a third orbital plane in August 1994, Production Association (Polet Proizvod­ the Cold War era. In particular, the Russian the 1988 goal of a complete 21-spacecraft stvennoe Ob"edinenie or Polet PO) in Omsk, Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS), constellation by the year 1995 is within Russia, while the design of payloads and sig­ cousin to the U.S. Navstar Global Positioning reach, and support for the high-precision , nificant subsystems has been accomplished System, continues to evolve toward filii real-time navigation network has expanded by the Institute for Space Device Engineering operational capability with the promise of from its national military migins to the inter­ (also known as the Russian Scientific enhancing the reliability and integrity of national civil sector. Research Institute of Space Instrument Man­ positioning using GPS alone. Although Russia ufacture or Rossiyskiy Nauchno Issledova­ is making GLONASS available to the world PROGRAM BACKGROUND telskiy Institut Kosmicheskikh Priborov community, information on certain aspects of its Development of GLONASS in the for­ [RNII KP]) in Moscow. In the development operation is still hard tofind. In this month's mer Soviet Union closely paralleled the of the GLONASS system, another principal "Innovation" article, Nicholas Johnson, a evolution of space-based navigation systems partner has been the Russian Institute of senior scientist with Kaman Sciences Corpora­ in the United States, with the first serious Radionavigation and Time (Rossiyskiy Insti­ tion in Colorado Springs, Colorado, helps tofill Soviet designs emerging during 1958- 59. tut Radionavigatsii i Vremeni or RIRV) , the data gap with a detailed description of The first Soviet navigation satellite, Tsyklon which has been responsible for time synchro­ GLONASS spacecraft, .how they are launched, (launched as Kosmos 192 into a low earth nization and related equipment. and how the constellation of spacecraft has orbit [LEO] in 1967) was based upon Conceived and promoted in the early evolved since the first one was put into orbit in Doppler techniques demonstrated by the U.S. 1970s by the former Soviet Ministry of October 1982. Johnson is a leading expert on Navy 's Transit program, which began in the Defense, and in particular by the Soviet the former Soviet Union's (and now the late 1950s. Today, Russia still maintains two Navy, GLONASS is now the centerpiece of Commonwealth of Independent States's) space LEO navigation systems: the six-satellite the CIS 's Intergovernmental Radionaviga­ programs and is a consultant on space systems military Parus (also known as Tsikada-M) tion Program, which has close ties with the to private industry and the U.S. federal govern­ and the four-satellite civil Tsikada systems. International Civil Aviation Organization ment. His latest book, Europe and Asia in Space Doppler satellite navigation systems, how­ (ICAO) and the International Maritime Orga­ 1991-1992, was published in July. ever, have inherent limitations. They pro­ nization (IMO). By presidential decree on "Innovation " is a regular column in vide only two-dimensional positions (with September 24, 1993 , just before the 13th GPS World featuring discussions on recent roughly 500-meter predictable accuracy in anniversary of the maiden GLONASS flight, advances in GPS technology and its each coordinate at the 95 percent probability the GLONASS program was officially applications as well as on the fundamentals of level using single-frequency observations placed under the auspices of the Russian Mil­ GPS positioning. The column is coordinated by from a single satellite pass), output no veloc­ itary Space Forces (Voenno Kosmicheski Richard Langley and Alfred Kleusberg of the ity information, and have poor system timeli­ Sily or VKS). VKS is responsible not only Department of Geodesy and Geomatics Engi­ ness. These three factors spurred the former for the deployment and on-orbit maintenance neering at the University of New Brunswick. We Soviet Union to once again follow the Amer­ of GLONASS spacecraft (the latter through appreciate receiving your comments and ican lead, this time mimicking the U.S. the Golitsino-2 System Control Center south­ suggestions of topics for future columns. Global Positioning System (GPS). west of Moscow) but also, through its Scien- November 1994 GPS WORLD sr INN OV ATI O N tific Information Coordination Center (Koor­ Figure 1. The dinatsiya Nauchno Informatsiya Tsentr or GLONASS KNITs), for certification of GLONASS user spacecraft design equipment (for example, the Shkiper for mar­ has been continuously itime use, the A-724 for aviation use, and the improved since 1982. To ITI29 and ITI30M for land use). date, four major variants have been flown: Block I, Block IIa , THE SPACECRAFT Block lib, and Block llv. (Drawing Each GLONASS spacecraft (also known as based on an illustration in Seteve Dragan, Russian for hurricane) has a mass of Sputnikove Radionavigatsionne as much as 1,400 kilograms, compared with Sistemy [Satellite Radionavigation 840 kilograms and 930 kilograms for Nav­ System Networks}, V.S . Shebshaevich, star Block II and IIA spacecraft, respec­ Radio i Svya', Moscow, 1993.) tively. Like many Russian spacecraft, the GLONASS vehicle consists primarily of a vice during 1982-85 (Kosmos 1414-1650) almost 65 degrees (similar to Navstar Block I roughly cylindrical pressure vessel equipped and achieved an average operational lifetime spacecraft), the GLONASS orbit is "ground­ with a small aft payload platform and two of 14 months. Six Block Ila spacecraft track stabilized," repeating every 17 rev­ large solar arrays. The total spacecraft bus launched during 1985- 86 (Kosmos 1651 - olutions or eight days. In other words, a height exceeds three meters, and the solar 1780) averaged about 17 months, about a 20 GLONASS satellite will cross the equator in anays have a total span of more than seven percent increase in lifetime. Moreover, Block a northbound direction, at on! y 17 locations meters, with an electrical power generation Ila also introduced new time and frequency approximately 21.2 degrees apart, before capacity of 1.6 kilowatts at beginning of life standards and increased frequency stability repeating the cycle. Such groundtrack stabi­ (see Figure 1) . by an order of magnitude. lization techniques are widely used by other The aft structure houses the 12 primary The next group of spacecraft, the Block Russian spacecraft, including lllilitary early­ payload antennas for L-band transmissions, lib, had expected design lives of two years . warning and ocean-surveillance satellites. which originally used operational frequen­ Twelve Block lib spacecraft were launched (Readers unfamiliar with satellite orbit termi­ cies from 1246 to 1257 MHz and from during 1987- 88 (Kosmos 1838-1948). nology may wish to consult the artilce "The 1603 to 1616 MHz. (Recently, antipodal Although six were lost in launch-vehicle fail­ Orbits of GPS Satellites," in the May 1991 GLONASS spacecraft have started to share ures, the remaining six almost met their spec­ issue of GPS World.) frequencies. The reduction of spectrum occu­ ifications, operating for an average of nearly To provide continuous global navigational pation should reduce interference with radio 22 months each. coverage when fully deployed, the GLO­ astronomy observations, which has been a Again , the next generation of satellites NASS constellation will consist of three problem.) The pressure vessel contains the was expected to exceed the lifetimes