The talk about accelerating deployment of the Glonass system may become reality this year. After all, the president ordered the system to be completed in 2008.
According to Andrey Kozlov, the director of the Reshetnev Applied Mechanics NPO, which produces the spacecraft, five Glonass satellites will be launched this year. Three of them will be launched by a Proton launcher in December, as planned. Two additional satellites have not been in the schedule, so it is not clear when this launch might take place and what launcher will be used. A possibility of using a Soyuz launcher with the Fregat booster stage has been mentioned, but this combination has never been used for Glonass launches, so there are reasons to be skeptical.
The book
Comments
I believe the idea was to launch 2 Glonass-K satellites which are simplified and lighter versions on Soyuz/Fregat launch vehicle. Although I doubt this will happen in 2006.
Yes, this seems to be the case. But Kozlov said in the same interview that Glonass-K will not be launched before 2008.
Popovkin in his interview mentions that the plan is to use Soyuz-2 from Plesetsk to launch Glonass satellites (two spacecraft in one launch). He says, however, that these launches will begin only after the constellation will have all 24 satellites deployed, which won't happen until at least 2008.