SPACE RESPONDS … TO THE CRISIS
About 30 thousand people around the world die each year from earthquakes. Economic damage from seismic cataclysms reaches hundreds of billions of dollars which can be about 40% of national wealth in small countries. And all natural and man-made disasters combined cost humanity more than $1 trillion a year. This amount is about 100 times higher than the cost of creating the International Aerospace System of Global Phenomena Monitoring (IASGM), the idea of which was put forward by the Khrunichev State Space Research and Production Center. The International Znanie Association, the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) and the Russian Academy of Astronautics named after K. E. Tsiolkovsky have proposed the idea. Russian Academy of Cosmonautics K.E. Tsiolkovsky has decided to dedicate the International Symposium «Space and the Global Security of Mankind», which will take place in November 2009 in Cyprus. Efim MALITIKOV — IAAS corresponding member and president of IA «Znanie», representing it in the UN structures (UNIDO, ECOSOC, DPI) — tells more about the topic of the symposium.
— Efim Mikhailovich, first of all, tell us what specific benefits the IGMASS system will bring?
— We are talking about the monitoring of precursors of earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, droughts, floods, landslides, storms, as well as man-made disasters. This will make it possible not only to predict them, but also subsequently to quickly assess addresses and volumes of necessary assistance, including humanitarian aid. For instance, tsunami «transforms» the Earth surface in such a way that boundaries of the damaged territory are visible from space. It is not accidental that the motto of the forthcoming symposium was the following formula: «Preventing natural and man-made disasters, mitigating their consequences, and being prepared for them is more cost-effective than reacting to their consequences.» In the more distant future, mankind is likely to learn how to prevent natural disasters, just as we already know how to disperse clouds and shed rain.
— Why couldn’t aerospace monitoring have been created before? Have new technical capabilities emerged, have scientists learned how to predict earthquakes?
— This is only one of the reasons, although, of course, an important one. Indeed, today one can see from space a lit match, a smoldering cigarette butt or even determine military rank by epaulettes. Modern space system is able to register earthquake precursors such as disturbances in the ionosphere, ozone layer and atmosphere, anomalies of cloud fields, shifts in the Earth’s surface, thermal and gravitational anomalies, changes in groundwater hydrodynamics. However, it is no less important that mankind begins to think seriously about its future. Cellular telephony, satellite technology, and the Internet have brought people so close together that they have simultaneously «shrunk» the planet itself. We are becoming more and more aware of the extent to which its resources are being depleted and of the threats hanging over it. Meanwhile, global monitoring requires global efforts, and no country can cope with it alone.
— As far as I understand, IGMASS is originally a Russian project. Does it have sufficient support abroad?
— Yes, Russia is the initiator and leader of the project. Valery Menshikov, IAA academician, vice-president of the Russian Academy of Cosmonautics first spoke about it at the international conference in Dnepropetrovsk in 2007. Last year, Valery Alexandrovich made relevant presentations at conferences in Korolev, Shanghai, Tunis and Glasgow. Already at this stage we were supported by IAA members from China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Nigeria, Tunisia, Ukraine, USA. To strengthen our support and engage other countries in the project, we initiated the symposium «Space and the Global Security of Mankind». The United Nations and personally its secretary general Ban Ki-moon have already approved it, the president of Cyprus Demetris Christofias has promised to provide full assistance. The activities are now underway, in the course of which support for our idea will hopefully expand to the most, if not the most, global scale.
— As far as I understand, IGMASS is originally a Russian project. Does it have sufficient support abroad?
— Yes, Russia is the initiator and leader of the project. Valery Menshikov, Vice-President of the Russian Academy of Cosmonautics, IAA academician, first spoke about it at the international conference in Dnepropetrovsk in 2007. Last year, Valery Alexandrovich made relevant presentations at conferences in Korolev, Shanghai, Tunis and Glasgow. Already at this stage we were supported by IAA members from China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Nigeria, Tunisia, Ukraine, USA. To strengthen our support and engage other countries in the project, we initiated the symposium «Space and the Global Security of Mankind». The United Nations and personally its secretary general Ban Ki-moon have already approved it, the president of Cyprus Demetris Christofias has promised to provide full assistance. There are now a lot of activities taking place, which will hopefully expand support for our idea to the most global scale.
— What kind of events?
— In March 2009, in Paris, we held a meeting of the Presidium of the International Academy of Astronautics, where we «synchronized our watches»: agreed on coordination and basically won over the skeptics and pessimists, without whom, as you know, no great undertaking can do. In the French capital, from representatives of China, Russia, the United States, and France, we formed the Academy’s working group on the IGMASS project. This October the South Korean city of Daejeon will host the 60th International Space Congress (IAC-2009) with the theme close to us — «Space for Stable Peace and Progress». As you see, the preparations are being made on a truly universal scale, and it should be noted here that we have enlisted the support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation. I reached a preliminary agreement on this back in February with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov: he entrusted his deputy Alexander Yakovenko with the foreign policy supervision of our events. The diplomatic infrastructure of Russia, including the envoy to the UN Vitaly Churkin, has been notified and invited to participate in the organization of both the Congress in South Korea and the symposium in Cyprus.
— What is IGMASS from a technical point of view? Is it something like a space fleet, with ships observing certain parts of the planet?
— The system is incomparably more complicated, because it consists not only of space, but also of air and ground segments. Six satellites in geostationary orbit are supposed to be placed in space, which is the upper tier of the segment. Three-four more satellites are put into sun-synchronous orbits, which is the lower tier. The air segment includes airplanes, helicopters, and airships and is created by individual states. Remote sensing data are transmitted to national space information receiving stations and to regional data collection and processing centers.
— That is — to the ground segment?
— The role of this segment of the IGMASS is by no means limited to the collection, «digestion» and interpretation of messages from the atmosphere and space. The so-called direct control will also be carried out with the help of sensors installed on the ground. For example, if the corresponding sensor is located in the body of the glacier, the observation of its movement will make it possible to calculate the time of the glacier slope on the mountain ridge and to evacuate people from the danger zone in the valley in time. After processing, all information — from satellites, aircraft, and ground sensors — is sent to national crisis management centers, from where it is transmitted both to government agencies around the world and to international crisis management centers. The latter transmit data to the UN and also exchange information with early warning systems for disasters that already exist in different countries.
— Don’t you think that the height of the global crisis is not the best time to implement such a large-scale and expensive project as IGMASS?
— This is exactly the opposite. In Russia alone the implementation of the project will create over a hundred thousand additional jobs, all requiring high qualifications. As you know, during economic downturns governments try to employ the unemployed in the public sector, for example in road construction. Not all people are suitable and capable of such jobs. But the project of the aerospace system for monitoring of global phenomena, even in crisis conditions, will help not only to keep, but also to multiply our scientific and engineering potential. This will contribute to the implementation of an innovative scenario of the country’s development and its breakthrough into the high-tech future. Add to this the savings of 80-100 billion rubles per year due to the prevention of emergency situations. And do not forget the lives and health of many Russians, saved for the same reason.
Olga Martyanova
