After hearing a report from the Commander of the Space Forces, Vladimir Popovkin, President Putin and President Chirac had a talk, with their closest advisers taking part.
Mr Putin and Mr Chirac then looked at the work of the Space Forces shift on duty. The head of the Main Space Test and Control Centre, Nikolai Kolesnikov, demonstrated an electronic board showing the schedule of the crew’s work with various satellite systems.
The Centre calculates and traces all the orbits of the spacecraft and satellites launched from Russian territory. In the 46 years of its work the Centre has had more than 8 million sessions of communication and control of spacecraft, probes and orbital stations.
By commission of the Defence Ministry the Centre is responsible for the single time and model frequency system called Tsel (Target).
The Centre’s experts take part in flight tests and the development of new models of military and dual-purpose space assets, control individual space vehicles and the nation’s fleet of civilian and scientific satellites.
The Centre takes part in all the joint international space projects, fundamental research of deep space and in the implementation of national security space programmes.