Russia to help Cuba build space center

[greektzon]

http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSLH47851920080917?rpc=401

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Moscow is ready to help Cuba develop its own space center, Russia's space agency chief said on Wednesday after talks in Caracas with Venezuelan and Cuban officials, Itar-Tass news agency reported.
Russia has stepped up efforts to develop closer links with both countries, which are ideological enemies of Washington, including sending Russian strategic bombers on a mission to Venezuela this month.

"We have held preliminary discussions about the possibility of creating a space center in Cuba with our help," the chief of Russia's Federal Space Agency Anatoly Perminov was quoted as saying by Itar-Tass in Caracas.
"With our Cuban colleagues, we discussed the possibilities of joint use of space equipment ... and the joint use of space communications systems," Perminov was quoted as saying.

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin visited Cuba this week and together with representatives from several Russian ministries and large Russian companies looked at ways to help Cuba recover from hurricanes Gustav and Ike.
Renewed Russian links to the Caribbean island will stir memories in Washington of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis when the United States and Soviet Union almost went to war over Soviet missile bases on Cuba, which is 90 miles from U.S. shores.

Russian officials have said they want to renew Cuban ties that were neglected after the Soviet Union's collapse.

[North Pole Resident]

The Russians Were First

On October 4, 1957, Humanity Entered A New Space Age

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/images/july-dec07/sputnik_10-03.jpg

http://youtube.com/watch?v=_J4IbHZhhh4


An aluminum ball with four antennas and two radio transmitters inside, Sputnik I weighed 183 pounds and orbited Earth transmitting a beeping radio signal for 23 days before it ran out of batteries. It fell out of orbit and burned up upon reentry into the Earth's atmosphere in January 1958.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/july-dec07/sputnik_10-03.html

http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/spacecraft/russia/r7-sputnik.jpg

Sputnik on the launch pad being prepared for liftoff

http://www.zarya.info/Diaries/Sputnik/Sputnik.php


Russia on Thursday marked the 50th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik, the tiny satellite whose crackly beeps started the Space Race between the Cold War superpowers.

"We Were First," trumpeted a headline in the popular Izvestia daily. "At 22:28 Moscow time on October 4, 1957, humanity entered a new space age. The Soviet Union sent the Earth's first artificial satellite into orbit."

Veterans of the Soviet space programme laid flowers near the Kremlin wall at the grave of Sergei Korolyov, the space pioneer who created Sputnik and whose identity was a state secret throughout his life.

A monument to the satellite, whose name means fellow traveller, was unveiled near Moscow.

President Vladimir Putin sent a congratulatory message to Russia's space scientists, saying: "The launch of the Earth's first satellite was a truly historic event, which started a space age in the world."

Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov also praised a "tremendous" achievement.

The launch of Sputnik 1 was a huge propaganda coup for the Soviet Union in its rivalry with the United States and is being interpreted in the same vein 50 years later amid heightened Russian assertiveness.

http://www.physorg.com/news110701111.html

The Sputnik program was a series of unmanned space missions launched by the Soviet Union in late 1957 to demonstrate the viability of artificial satellites for exploring the upper atmosphere as part of the International Geophysical Year. It included Sputnik 1, the first man-made object to orbit earth.

The Russian name "Спутник" means literally "co-traveler","traveling companion" or "satellite".

http://www.redcolony.com/pics/news/410l.jpg


http://www.google.com/logos/google_sputnik.gif

http://www.google.com/search?q=sputnik+anniversary

[North Pole Resident]

More on Russia-Cuba relations:

http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/085B8SfdPTeE6/610x.jpg

1 week ago: Workers unload humanitarian aid from a Russian plane in Havana September 5, 2008.
Russia, Cuba's former Cold War ally, flew in four planeloads of tents, electric cables and glass panels as part of the international help flowing into the island working to recover from devastating Hurricane Gustav.

http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/0cVh86w8sG0Oe/610x.jpg

1 week ago: Russian crew members unload wooden boxes containing glass panels from a cargo plane after landing in Havana September 5, 2008.

[North Pole Resident]

Bloodied, but unbowed

Sep 18th 2008
From The Economist:

Desperate for international aid, hurricane-torn Cuba turns down any relief from its old foe, the United States

Gustav and Ike woz here“NEVER in the history of Cuba have we had a case like this,” President Raúl Castro lamented after two powerful hurricanes, barely a week apart, struck the island, severely damaging crops and leaving some 200,000 homeless. Miraculously, Havana, the capital, was left virtually unscathed, as were the main tourist resorts, the oil industry and nickel mining. But with estimated losses of $5 billion, one of the world’s last communist regimes is facing a daunting task.

The enormous damage sustained to the island’s food supplies, housing and electricity grid raises big questions about Cuba’s ability to get by without massive international aid. Two of the island’s most valuable export crops, citrus and tobacco, suffered big losses. Luckily, the tobacco harvest was already in, but some 3,000 curing sheds where the leaves are stored were damaged. Almost half the sugarcane fields were flattened. The coffee harvest in the east has also been badly affected.

In the aftermath of the storms, Cuba’s main allies leapt to the rescue. Russia sent four large cargo planes carrying 200 tonnes of relief supplies. Brazil and Spain sent smaller shipments. Venezuela is expected to make a big contribution, though details are not yet known.

But not even hurricanes of this ferocity could break down the lack of trust between Cuba and its old foe, the United States. Instead, the two have plunged into yet another round of political argy-bargy. The Bush administration offered Cuba $100,000 in immediate relief aid, later raised to $5m, but Mr Castro turned it down, demanding instead that America lift its trade embargo to enable it to buy urgently needed reconstruction materials. (In neighbouring Haiti by contrast, where the storm damage was worse, the United States promptly dispatched a helicopter-laden warship to help relief efforts, as well as pledging $19.5m in aid.)

In Havana, food markets are already running out of supplies and prices have shot up. Although some Miami-based Cubans may be eagerly anticipating anti-government protests, analysts do not consider this is on the cards—unless the government bungles the relief effort. “It’s rather unlikely that sweating and starving Cubans go rioting in the streets, even less so against a government that has been effective in disaster preparation and response,” said Johannes Werner, editor of Cuba Trade and Investment News. “Cubans have a track record of coming out stronger in far worse situations,” he noted.

http://www.economist.com/world/americas/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12262213&fsrc=rss

[North Pole Resident]

Russia, Cuba to implement joint space programs

22/ 09/ 2008

MOSCOW. (Andrei Kislyakov for RIA Novosti) - There is every reason to say that Russia has started reasserting its global position. This includes big-time politics and efforts to expand scientific and military-technical cooperation with other countries, including Cuba, the Soviet Union's main Latin American ally.

It is hard to overestimate the importance of Latin America, and Cuba in particular, for Russia. Commenting on the results of Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev's August 2008 visit to Cuba, Andrei Klimov, deputy chairman of the foreign affairs committee of the State Duma, said Russia, as a major power, needed to maintain its economic and security presence in Cuba.

In mid-September, Moscow and Havana negotiated joint space projects. Anatoly Perminov, director of the Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos), said the sides had discussed the possibility of setting up a Cuban space center with Russian assistance.

Perminov said both countries had discussed the implementation of agreements reached by the Russian-Cuban inter-governmental commission two months ago. "This primarily concerns the drafting of a cooperation agreement on civilian space programs, another agreement on the Global Navigation Satellite System and navigation support on Cuban territory," Perminov said.

The proposed Cuban space center will process data received from Russian remote-sensing and navigation satellites. We also plan to jointly use orbital telecommunications networks, Perminov said.

Cuba, which at one time implemented an ambitious space program, retains the required infrastructure for resuming large-scale space research.

Several dozen Cuban agencies, including the R&D Institute of Geophysics and Astronomy, the Institute of Meteorology and the Fundamental Technical Research Institute of the Cuban Academy of Sciences, were involved in the national space program.

In the mid-1960s, Moscow and Havana launched a space-physics project, obtaining new data on the upper ionosphere with the help of Soviet satellites. A tracking station, built near Santiago de Cuba in 1967, made it possible to observe high-orbit Soviet scientific satellites.

In September 1980, Arnaldo Tamayo Mendez became the first Cuban cosmonaut and the first person from a country in the Western Hemisphere other than the United States to travel into Earth orbit, spending about eight days aboard the Soviet Salyut-6 station.

The Cuban space-research experience, plus up-to-date Russian technical achievements, will help both countries implement advanced space programs.

READ MORE -- http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20080922/117019780.html


http://nylatinojournal.com/home/images/stories/tamayo.jpg

Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez (born January 29, 1942) was the first Cuban cosmonaut and the first person from a country in the Western Hemisphere other than the United States to travel into earth orbit. He was also the first Hispanophone and first person of African ancestry in space.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnaldo_Tamayo_M%C3%A9ndez

[North Pole Resident]

And the Yanks are already freaking out..... :laugh: :laugh:


Russia-Cuba ties worry U.S.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/09/01/cuba_and_russia.jpg

Igor Sechin, center, one of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's closest aides, walks through the historic center of Old Havana in late July. During the trip, Sechin met with Raul Castro in an event that was qualified by the local media as "cordial and friendly."


Officials in the United States are worried that Russia is signaling that it wants to reignite its close relationship with its former ally Cuba. Paul Richter reports this morning that:
"Amid rising tensions over Georgia, U.S. officials are increasingly concerned that Russia is moving to rebuild one of the most dangerous features of the old Soviet Union's security structure -- its alliance with Cuba."

Moscow has been signaling that it wants to restore a long relationship with Havana that included not only economic ties, but also military and intelligence cooperation. The relationship brought the world to the brink of nuclear war during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, when Russia secretly installed nuclear missiles on the island.

READ MORE -- http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/laplaza/2008/09/russia-cuba-tie.html



Russian deputy PM in Cuba over 'aid'
Tue, 16 Sep 2008 16:18:54 GMT

Some 500,000 homes were demolished.
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin has made a one-day visit to Cuba to figure out hurricane damage and boost commercial ties.

Sechin accompanied with his entourage arrived in the country on Monday paying his second visit in two month, Reuters reported.

The Russian team was to consider ways to help Cuba recover from two devastating hurricanes, Gustav and Ike that inflicted extensive damage on the country.
Earlier Cuba had welcomed Russian aid following the devastating hurricane Gustav.

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=69583&sectionid=351020702

[North Pole Resident]

Some related news:


Venezuela, Cuba to jointly use Glonass satellites : Russia

Russia, Cuba and Venezuela are conducting talks on the joint use of Glonass navigation satellites, the head of the Federal Space Agency (Roskosmos) Anatoly Perminov said here after his return from the visit of Latin American countries. ''I have just returned from a working visit to Cuba. They are very interested in cooperating with us in the use of the Glonass system, which will cover the globe by 2010,'' Mr Perminov told RIA Novosti.

He said Moscow and Havana were working on a space cooperation agreement and have considered ways of jointly using earth remote sensing satellites. Mr Perminov said Russia would like to station several ground-based space communication facilities in Venezuela, stressing that they would have no military application. Russia recently said it intended to share its space technology with Cuba, and has begun discussions on building a space centre in the country. Glonass (Global Navigation Satellite System) is the Russian equivalent of the US Global Positioning System (GPS), which is designed for both military and civilian use, and allows users to identify their positions in real time. Russia plans to launch six satellites in the next three months to increase the existing Glonass grouping to 18-19 spacecraft.

http://news.webindia123.com/news/articles/World/20080924/1061340.html


http://www.insidegnss.com/auto/focus/GLONASS%20logo_lo.jpg

http://www.glonass-ianc.rsa.ru

GLONASS (Russian: ГЛОНАСС - ГЛОбальная НАвигационная Спутниковая Система; tr.: GLObal'naya NAvigatsionnaya Sputnikovaya Sistema; English: Global Navigation Satellite System) is a radio-based satellite navigation system, developed by the former Soviet Union and now operated for the Russian government by the Russian Space Forces. It is an alternative and complementary to the United States' Global Positioning System (GPS) and the planned Galileo positioning system of the European Union (EU).
Development on the GLONASS began in 1976, with a goal of global coverage by 1991. Beginning on 12 October 1982, numerous rocket launches added satellites to the system until the constellation was completed in 1995. Following completion, the system rapidly fell into disrepair with the collapse of the Russian economy. Beginning in 2001, Russia committed to restoring the system, and in recent years has diversified, introducing the Indian government as a partner, and accelerated the program with a goal of restoring global coverage by 2009.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GLONASS