RUSSIAN MFA NON-PAPER ON U.S. AND RUSSIAN COMM

C O N F I D E N T I A L MOSCOW 000556 SIPDIS DEPARTMENT FOR EUR/RUS, EUR/PRA, OES/SAT, AND ISN/MDSP E.O. 12958: DECL: 03/20/2019 TAGS: TSPA PREL RS SUBJECT: RUSSIAN MFA NON-PAPER ON U.S. AND RUSSIAN COMM SATELLITE COLLISION REF: A. STATE 12945 ¶B. MOSCOW 356 ¶C. MOSCOW 435 ¶D. MARCH 5 ¶E. 2009 ISN/MDSP BUENNEKE-KLEPP E-MAIL AND OTHERS Classified By: EST Counselor Deborah Klepp: Reasons 1.4 (b, d) ¶1. (C) On March 6, EST Counselor met with MFA North America Desk Counselor Aleksandr Shilin, at Shilin's request. Shilin provided the Russian government non-paper in Russian (text of unofficial Embassy translation below) on the February 10 collision of U.S. and Russian satellites, information promised by Deputy Foreign Minister Ryabkov to the Ambassador (ref B). Shilin explained that the Russian government is still assessing the situation and calculating the amount of debris and its potential impact on the International Space Station and other space objects. EST counselor welcomed the non-paper as part of the information sharing that both Russia and the U.S. agreed is critical in such situations (ref C). Drawing from points in Ref D, EST Counselor noted that the U.S. would like to use this opportunity to improve bilateral transparency and confidence measures related to our respective space activities. Given the increasingly congested and complex nature of thQspace environment, resuming such a dialogue would reduce the chance of misinterpretation or miscalculation in the future. She called baseless the press accounts of remarks by a former Russian military officers that the U.S. could have deliberately engineered the collision. Shilin assented. She commented that the U.S. government assessment is also still underway, but that U.S. experts would welcome the chance to share their assessment of events leading to the collision and collaborate on studying the long-term impact of the collission to human spaceflight and other space activities. She asked how Embassy Moscow and the MFA can facilitate discussion between U.S. and Russian government experts. Shilin was receptive and undertook to find out. ¶2. (SBU) Begin Non-Paper text (unofficial Embassy translation): The Russian Federation confirms hereby that according to the Russian space surveillance system two satellites - Iridium-33 and Russia's Kosmos-2251 - collided February 10, 2009 at 19:56 Moscow time at an altitude of 788 km, resulting in destruction of both space vehicles. Kosmos-2251 military satellite was launched back in 1993. It did not have any nuclear devices. Since 1995, when it became inactive according to plan, its on-board equipment has been deactivated and the satellite was no longer part of Russia's orbital grouping. The satellite's orbiting was being monitored in automatic mode by the Russian control system. The Russian side was not in a position to prevent the collision between Kosmos-2251 and Iridium-33. Russia's space surveillance system is tracking the debris fields in alitudes ranging from 280 km to 1,300 km. Information regarding the number of debris is being constantly updated. Analysis of the possible reasons and consequences of the collision is continuing. Since the number of space vehicles in the near-earth space increases with every passing year, such collisions will become more and more likely Our estimates indicate that the issue of preventing collisions of the operating space vehicles, the ISS in the first place, with "space debris" is quite topical now. In this context, of major importance are such transparency and confidence-building measures in space activities as sharing data related to orbital parameters of space vehicles and consultations regarding ambiguous situations of concern for spacefaring nations, which was proposed by the Russian Federation on May 11, 2007 in response to UN General Assembly 2006 Resolution nunmber 61/75. Moscow, March 5, 2009 End Non-Paper text. Beyrle BEYRLE