Did the GLONASS Failure Sink Ivanov’s Chance at the Presidency?

Posted by Matt in February 6th, 2008

The Soviet military launched the first GLONASS satellites in the 1980s to counter the Pentagon’s GPS. In September 1993, GLONASS was officially declared operational with 12 satellites. In December 1995 with 24 satellites, GLONASS became fully operational for a short time, but as the satellites soon malfunctioned, the entire system swiftly decayed (www.strana.ru, December 26, 2007). To get a reading a global positioner needs to get the signal of at least three satellites. The United States has at present 30 GPS satellites in orbit that provide global positioning anytime, Russia has only 13 functional GLONASS satellites and those do not provide stable positioning anywhere. Sometimes during a day there are three satellites over the horizon, there is a reading, sometimes there are fewer, and sometimes there are none.

Map for Moscow, Russia

[Countries link to CIA Factbook. States link to Wikipedia.]

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