September 27, 2023, AviaStat.ru – Tajikistan and Russia have entered into an agreement on joint research of space debris in low-Earth orbit, it is awaiting ratification, after which it is planned to begin research, said the vice-president of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) of Tajikistan, director of the Institute of Astrophysics of the NAS Gulchehra Kokhirova. TASS reports this.
“We can happily state that in August 2023, this agreement was successfully signed by the government structures of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Tajikistan. At the moment, the agreement is at the stage of internal settlements, that is, it must be ratified,” she said, answering a related question .
Kokhirova noted that Tajikistan expects from this agreement that the observational potential of the observatories of the National Academy of Sciences of the republic will be used for applied tasks performed by Roscosmos. “Namely, control of near-Earth space. We would like to be involved in monitoring for peaceful purposes the contamination of near-Earth space with space debris in order to contribute to the development of a strategy to mitigate potential threats from this debris associated with possible collisions with working spacecraft, as well as the fall of this debris onto the surface of the Earth,” she said.
The agency’s interlocutor also noted that the basis for the bilateral agreement was the multilateral agreement on the implementation of joint activities of the CIS member states in the field of research and use of outer space for peaceful purposes, which was signed by the heads of government of Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan on November 2 2018 in Astana. According to her, Tajik scientists have experience and are ready to contribute to solving the problem of the danger of asteroids and meteorites.
Earlier, NAS President Farhod Rahimi announced the possibility of signing such an agreement. In Tajikistan, observatories are located in Gissar, on Mount Sanglokh in the Dangara region, as well as in the Murghab region of the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region.
Source: Aex News
