The name GLONASS (Globalnaya Navigatsionnaya Sputnikovaya Sistema) from Russia is certainly no stranger to ears. Side by side with GPS and Beidou, GLONASS has a similar base to support satellite-based navigation functions for civil and military world needs.
However, because it has a strategic role, it's not surprising that navigation satellites have an undisclosed payload, making navigation satellites identical as 'spy satellites'. Well, what about GLONASS, which was born during the Cold War?
Quoting a source from thespacereview.com, it is said that the GLONASS satellite does have a payload that is highly classified, and it seems that the role of this payload is a secondary function of GLONASS. The secret charge is suspected as an instrument or device to detect nuclear explosions on the surface of the Earth.
One of GLONASS's secondary missions is detecting nuclear explosions, a task shared by Russia's latest generation of early warning satellites. Similarly, nuclear detection payloads have been carried by US navigation and early warning satellites.
It forms the space segment of the Nuclear Detonation Detection System (NDS), which is designed to provide a worldwide capability to detect, locate, and report any nuclear explosion in Earth's atmosphere and near space in real-time.
The NDS principally supports nuclear detection requirements in five mission areas, namely tactical warning and attack assessment, nuclear force management, nuclear treaty monitoring, space control and covert missions.
And from the Soviet (Russian) camp, the Lira became a nuclear explosion detection instrument on a satellite designed in the late 1980s, namely in response to the introduction of a nuclear detection payload on the United States GPS satellites, which were the first to become operational.
However, Project Lira only started on January 15, 1990, when NPO PM awarded the contract for the system to the Scientific Center of Optical and Physical Research (NTsOFI). The nuclear detection payload was originally called Zarya (“dawn”), but was later renamed BAL, which stands for “Lira On-Board Equipment”.
Due to financial problems, NTSOFI withdrew from the project in the mid-1990s and was replaced as prime contractor for Lira in May 1997 by the Scientific Research Institute of Precision Instrument Building (NII PP), renamed Scientific and Industrial Corporation “Precision Instrument Systems” (NPK). SPP) in 2007.
The first nuclear detection payload was launched aboard the Kosmos-2382 rocket on December 1, 2001. It is a modified first-generation GLONASS satellite (designated 14F17) with a longer design life than its predecessor.
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| Russian GLONASS Navigation Satellite |
The Lira nuclear detection sensor became the standard payload for the GLONASS satellites introduced in the GLONASS-M series in December 2003.
Lira can observe a nuclear explosion with a yield from one kiloton to five megatons from ground level to an altitude of 20,000 kilometers. It can determine the coordinates of a nuclear explosion to an accuracy of 300 meters, but apparently this can only be accomplished if at least four GLONASS satellites view the event simultaneously.
One article published in 2013 said that GLONASS satellites not within range of the terminal could theoretically relay information to other GLONASS satellites via laser or radio communication links in the 20-40 GHz range.
The Glonass-M satellite is indeed equipped with an inter-satellite radio communication system and, according to the GLONASS history published in 2012, one of its goals is to convey information about nuclear explosions.
Several Glonass-M satellites have also tested an inter-satellite laser communication system, which is expected to become a standard feature of the GLONASS-K2 satellite.
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