Azernews.Az

By Ayya Lmahamad

Azerbaijani Space Agency (Azercosmos) Board Chairman Samaddin Asadov has said that the agency has monitored over 1,000 settlements liberated from Armenia's occupation in 2020.

He made the remarks at the presentation of the project to restore Azerbaijani toponyms on the electronic map "GoMap".

Asadov noted that the development of the space sector in Azerbaijan makes it possible to implement competitive projects.

"Today we have three satellites that allow us to monitor certain areas and implement information technology projects. As part of the project, more than 1,000 settlements in the liberated territories of Azerbaijan were monitored," he said.

The board chairman added that the Armenian names of Azerbaijani cities and villages, located in the country's liberated territories, on Google maps may be completely removed in the future. He noted that the Digital Development and Transport Ministry is actively cooperating with Google to change the display of toponyms on the maps of the search engine.

"Within this cooperation, a number of toponyms have already been changed. The Cyber-Security Center is also in close contact with Google. The Google map already displays the Azerbaijani names. This is the result of our cooperation,” he said.

To recall, earlier, Baku sent a letter to Google over the distorted names of Azerbaijani territories liberated from the Armenian occupation displayed on Google Maps. The issue was raised before Google through diplomatic channels that the geographical maps in the Google Maps app contain distorted names in Armenian along with the official names in Azerbaijani of the territories of Azerbaijan’s Karabakh region.

Additionally, speaking about the Azerspace-1 satellite, Asadov noted that some 80 percent of investments in the satellite have paid off. He added that the satellite will continue to function for the next nine years.

"In the first satellite of Azerbaijan, which was launched into space in 2013, $230 million was invested. The lifetime of this satellite is 17 years. We’ll continue to use the services and capabilities of this satellite in the remaining nine years," he said.

Established in 2010, Azercosmos is the only satellite operator in the South Caucasus region and provides high-quality satellite services for telecommunications and geographic intelligence.

Azercosmos along with Azerspace-1, Azerspace-2 and Azersky satellites, facilitates the reception of signals from satellites of other satellite operators and via a fiber-optic network.

In February 2013, Azerbaijan launched its first telecommunications satellite Azerspace-1 into orbit, and a year later sent into space a satellite for remote observation of the Earth's surface with geoinformation services Azersky. In 2018, the third Azerbaijani satellite Azerspace-2 appeared in orbit, operated by Azercosmos. The satellite is controlled by Azerbaijani specialists.

This sector is very important for the overall growth, development of the non-oil sector, improvement of the business environment, and increasing the intellectual potential of the country.

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Ayya Lmahamad is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @AyyaLmahamad

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