SA spy satellite issue resurrected
ARussian-developed Kondor radar surveillance satel- lite, launched into space in June last year and which has been linked in the South African media to the South African National Defence Force’s Project Flute (aimed at obtaining a radar surveillance satellite from Russia), actually belongs to the Russian armed forces and is the Kondor-1 version of the spacecraft. The launch of the first export version, the Kondor-E, for an undisclosed customer, is currently scheduled for February 27.
The existence of a South African project to develop a military – most probably a surveillance (or, more popularly, a spy) satellite – was reported by Engineering News in February 2008. The project was accidentally revealed by the then head of Russia’s civilian space agency, Roscosmos, AnatolyPerminov, after it had been terminated by South Africa in an manner or for reasons that caused significant offence to the Russian Ministry of Defence. In retaliation, the Russian military refused to launch South Africa’s Sumbandila earth observation satellite.
“[U]nfortunately, the Russian Defence Ministry refused to launch this satellite, as the South African Defence Ministry [in turn] refused to use our satel-lite,” he said. “The two countries’ Defence Ministries decided to go their own way, and we did not interfere in these affairs.” (Sumbandila was later launched by Roscosmos, which does not fall under the Ministry of Defence.)
The issue of Project Flute was raised recently by official opposition Democratic Alliance shadow Minister of Defence and Military Veterans David Maynier. He issued a statement asserting that Project Flute had cost the country R1-billion and called on government to account for this expenditure. “The initial cost of Project Flute was R1.2-billion, but the final cost of the project is unknown,” he stated. A contract was signed with NPO Mash on May 19, 2006. “The current status of the project is unknown. “However, it appears to be ongoing,” he affirmed.
The Kondor-1 is the first radar surveillance satellite operated by the Russian armed forces, although the country has, in the past, operated two civilian space-based radar surveillance systems: the Almaz 1 satellite and the Prirode module of the Mir space station. Kondor-1 is operated by the Russian Aerospace Defence Forces and is classified by NPO Mash as a small spacecraft. It is the result of a programme launched in the early 1990s. According to the US National Aeronautics and Space Agency, NPO Mash received orders for radar and optical surveillance versions of the satellite in 1997, but funding cuts brought the project to a halt. After some years, Russian military funding was restored and the satellite was completed and finally launched in 2013.
While the Kondor-1 programme was halted owing to a lack of funds, NPO Mash set about developing an export version, for civil use, designated Kondor-E or Condor-E, (E for export).
On its website, the company reports that the Kondor-E is fitted with synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and is “designed for [the] collection, storage and transmission of detailed earth remote sensing data in the microwave electromagnetic spectral band . . . SAR ensures round-the-clock and all-weather survey of the earth [sic] surface”. Its radar operates in an S-band and has a resolution, in spotlight mode, of between 1 m and 2 m, in stripmap mode of between 1 m and 3 m, and in scanSAR mode of between 5 m and 30 m. The radar has a swath of more than 10 km, but rolling the spacecraft can give a coverage of 500 km. The Kondor-E can have a mass of up to 1 150 kg.
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