Russia's VNIIEM Corporation and the British Surrey Satellite Technology company signed a protocol on potential cooperation in the creation of a Russian small Earth remote-sensing (ERS) satellite, Russia's Federal Space Agency Roscosmos said Wednesday.

"The document provides for the prospects of the development and supply of equipment for airborne guidance system, which will consist of the power supply system (without solar cells), of stability, orientation and navigation systems, of onboard computational module with software, of orbital propulsion unit and of S-band SAR [synthetic aperture radar] for ERS microsatellite," the statement reads.

According to the Russian Federal Space Program, the number of remote sensing satellites will increase to 20 by 2025. At the moment Russia operates seven ERS satellites.

On Tuesday, two Russian space companies and the Iranian Bonyan Danesh Shargh firm signed an agreement on joint development of an Earth remote-sensing satellite system for Iran.

Russia, Germany Sign Several Space Cooperation Deals
Russia's federal Roscosmos space agency said Wednesday it had signed a number of documents on cooperation in the space industry with the German Aerospace Center (DLR).

"Roscosmos and DLR have jointly developed and signed provisions on working groups, which will be created for general work on the development of space robotics and remote sensing. The composition of the working groups will be decided by the end of 2015," Roscosmos said in a statement.

The parties also signed an additional agreement, extending cooperation on the joint Kontur-2 International Space Station experiment throughout 2016. The unique experiment focuses on remotely controlling robots from space.

Source: Sputnik News