The head of "Roscosmos" Yuri Borisov participated in the opening of the Russian optical-electronic complex of operational monitoring of space debris in South Africa.

Yuri Borisov noted that the rapid increase in the number of satellites in orbit leads to an increase in the threat of collision of spacecraft. Only in 2022, Russian monitoring systems identified more than 600 violations of the four-kilometer safety zone of the ISS, as well as more than 16,000 cases of dangerous passages of space debris objects near the satellites. Therefore, it is very important to expand the network of space monitoring stations.

The Russian optical-electronic complex was built within the contract of the scientific-production corporation "Precision Instrumentation Systems" (part of "Roscosmos") and the South African National Space Agency. It can detect space debris at altitudes ranging from 120 to 40 thousand km, and can also determine the angular coordinates of space objects and identify them.

The complex in South Africa became the second of four specialized optical-electronic complexes, the first one is installed in Brazil.