Kazakhstan interested in Azerbaijani satellite services
By Nigar Orujova
Kazakhstan is interested in purchasing the services of the Azerbaijani AzerSky satellite.
This comment was made by Baglan Kaziev, the vice president of the creation and operation of space systems of the Kazakh national space company Kazakhstan Gharysh Sapary, to reporters in Baku on October 20.
“We are interested in the Azerbaijani satellite to increase satellite grouping,” he said at the Azerbaijani-Kazakh business forum. “We want to establish cooperation with Azercosmos and use the resources of your satellite.”
“The Kazakh satellite makes 16 circuits per day, of which only six are above Kazakhstan. Therefore, 2-3 days are required to shoot the same area. If we come to an agreement of buying the Azerbaijani satellite services, the periodicity of footage of the same area will decrease twofold,” he stressed.
Kazakhstan attaches great importance to cooperation with Azerbaijan in the sphere of using these remote sensing satellites, as the characteristics of Kazakh and Azerbaijani spacecraft are similar, Kaziev noted.
“Our spacecraft provides 1 meter resolution, the second – 6.5 meters,” he said. “Azerbaijani satellite provides 1.5 meters resolution. These are very similar characteristics.”
Kazakhstan Gharysh Sapary also intends to offer Azercosmos the chance to conclude distribution agreements and jointly sell the data of the AzerSky satellite, he said.
Kaziev added that Kazakhstan might also be interested in using the data of the second Azerbaijani satellite for remote sensing.
“The life time of all remote sensing satellites is about seven years, and soon there will be raised a question about the replacement of our remote sensing satellite,” he said. “In this respect, in the future, perhaps we will be interested in using your future satellite.”
Kaziev also said that starting from the next year, Kazakhstan expects to carry out a preliminary study for the creation of the next constellation of remote sensing satellites.
In addition, Kazakhstan is also interested in cooperation in the provision of satellite telecommunication services, he stressed.
“The subsidiary of Kazcosmos is engaged in the provision of telecommunications services from the KazSat-2, KazSat-3 satellite broadcasting stations...” said Kaziev. “Their total frequency is 2000 MHz. The needs of Kazakhstan are also 2000 megahertz. That is, our spacecrafts fully cover the needs of Kazakhstan. We also have experience in commercialization, and we are ready to share it with Azerbaijani colleagues.”
Today, Azercosmos, the first satellite operator in the Caucasus, is now managing fixed telecommunication satellite Azerspace-1 and a low-orbit satellite AzerSky. The company plans to operate a second telecommunication satellite, Azerspace-2, in 2017.
The satellite will be placed in an orbital position of 45 degrees east longitude and will be leased by the Azerbaijan side from the International Telecommunications Satellite Organization, which will have rights to 45.9 percent of satellite resources.
The service area of Azerspace-2 will cover the countries of Europe, Southeast Asia, Middle East, and Africa, providing digital broadcasting, Internet access, data transmission, creation of VSAT multi-service networks, and other services.
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Nigar Orujova is AzerNews’s staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @o_nigar
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