The centre of aerospace education, founded in the Belarusian State University, will become the Key link of the system of personnel training and continuing education for forming of a space sphere of Belarus. Now Russian and Belarusian operators carry out the assembly of a parabolic antenna of the data reception station of space exploration of the Earth on the roof of the building of the faculty of radiophysics and electronics. Equipment for space vehicles tracking, reception, transformation and processing of information from satellites is mounted and regulated, audience is equipped and will be opened for the first students. Students will follow a training program in their course of study, but in the future the course will be done by personnel, delegated to continuing education by Ministries and Departments.“Continuing education is not the only aim of the Centre of aerospace education”, Vladimir Saechnikov, the professor, the head of the Centre, and the physic department said. “We will coordinate the work of educational structures of Institutions of Higher Education, which are connected with space branch, in order the need of new specialists was satisfied by the universities to the full and timely. After our request the Ministry of Education sent letters to every University, where main directions of the space system development of the remote Earth sensing are followed. Reply letters from 10 universities, which estimated the need of new specialists in the space branch, were analyzed and the universities came to the conclusion that 50–60 new specialists have to graduate from universities every year. In the present the list of specialties does not include all necessary features and we propose to enlarge the list to educate people in the field of ground control as well as for receiving and processing of information, and effective use of remote sensing information, engineering of native micro satellites and many other functions. “Peleng” JSC gave a good example of such work. By its request Belarusian National Technological University established a new speciality — space optical instrumentation — since the previous year, where 10 new students can start their studying every year. As well as the process of studying takes five years and must be started at present, retraining of the specialists from allied trades is the main task nowadays. And it is very good that there are enough well educated specialists in the allied trades, which can be retrained. National program on the peaceful use of space which must be formed in 2008, will practically an end of the partial development of the space branch and establish organizational basis of its complex development. According to the Centre of Aerospace education, to meet these goals we need a well worked out regulatory framework, without which the new educational centre will face difficulties.”
“Our centre, being an educational structure, is a scientific organization, too, because our specialists can have a high level of education and knowledge, which are necessary tomorrow, only being in the swim”, Professor Saechnikov says. “That is why our faculty makes developments in the field of early-warning systems, geoinformational and ecoinformational systems, data of space sensing handling techniques, which are used in the applicable goals and save a lot of money. We engineered standard early-warning system, that warns about an emergency for “Belneftekhim”, which is already implemented in “Grodno Azot” JSC. It uses the net of automatic sensors which are located in the most dangerous places and warn people about every emergency situation immediately. It is known that space sensing improves activity of such system essentially. As a school guide we can use the flood situation control system, used on the basins and the largest rivers, such as Dvina, Pripyat, Sozh, Neman and Western Dvina. This system is used in the Crisis Command Centre of Emergency Situation Ministry and was useful taking operational decisions. Its database includes a statistical model based on the observations of water level of these rivers taken during 60 years, which allows forecasting floods, determining the most dangerous areas and estimating possible economic loss. Forecasted data are reflected in the digital map and are corrected according to the results of remote sensing of the Earth.
Geoinformational systems are worked out by the scientists for “Belovezhskaya pushcha” and “Braslavskie ozera” International Parks and Berezinsky Biosphere Reserve. Nowadays, using the space survey materials, specialists can analyze state of the animal and plant world more exactly, as well as skillfully plan any environmental actions.
It is planned to use new Belarusian satellite, which has already been engineered. Centre of aerospace education shall meet its top-priority goal, such as supply ground control and reception of space data with skillful specialists.
Viktor Radivinovskij
