Starting in October 2016, the State Corporation Roscosmos assumed the chairmanship of the International Charter on Space and Major Disasters. Until April 2017, the day-to-day activities of the Charter will be run, on behalf of the State Corporation, by the Scientific Center for Real-time Monitoring of Earth (SC RME) of the Joint Stock Company Russian Space Systems.
Exercising its rights as the space agency chairing the Charter, Roscosmos is holding on October 17 through 21, 2016 in Moscow the 36th regular meeting of the Board and Executive Secretariat of the Charter.
The International Charter on Space and Major Disasters was initiated in 1999 by the decision of the UNISPACE III international conference in Vienna. The mission of the Charter is to provide assistance to nations struck by major disasters by supplying them free of charge with Earth Remote Sensing (ERS) data covering the disaster area. The Charter is involved in active cooperation with various international organizations to coordinate and improve cohesion in the use of satellite data to address the tasks of emergency response (UNSPIDER, UNOOSA, AsiaSentinel).
At present the Charter has 16 signatories and includes: State Corporation Roscosmos, European, French, German, Brazilian, Indian, Chinese, Korean, Canadian, Argentinean, Venezuelan, Japanese space agencies, US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Geological Survey, a British company DMC Imaging Ltd and the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites.
Roscosmos officially joined the International Charter on Space and Major Disasters in 2013. The Roscosmos Center for coordination between the Ministry of Emergency Situations of Russia and the Charter established by the SC RME provides real-time space data from Russian ERS spacecraft of the Resurs-P, Canopus-B and Meteor-M type and receives images from foreign satellites.
Since Roscosmos joined the Charter, SC RME took part in 78 activations of the Charter and provided to the foreign participants in the Charter about 7.5 million square kilometers of Russian real-time and historical ERS data. In addition to this, SC RME received and delivered to the Ministry of Emergency Situations of Russia about 130 million square kilometers of foreign ERS data obtained within the framework of the Charter activations on the Russian Federation territory at the request of the Ministry of Emergency Situations of Russia.
Valeri Zaichko, the Charter Board member from the Russian Federation, head of department for unmanned space systems at Roscosmos: “Roscosmos participation in the Charter makes it possible to significantly expand the ability to cover in real time the areas struck by man-made or natural disasters using images from ERS spacecraft belonging to orbital constellations of other countries participating in the Charter. These space images are used by Russian and other countries’ rescue services to provide help to the victims and to recover from the disasters”.
