Azerbaijan, Baku / Trend corr.S.Babayeva / The Azerbaijani Communication and Information Technology Ministry is ready to submit to the government its proposals for launching the national satellite AzerSat.
Proposals being considered come from six of the largest satellite companies, including Intelsat, Intersputnik, and Spacecom. Still more proposals are being submitted to the Government. Two companies will be selected, one for preparation and the other for the launching of the satellite.
The Ministry reported that it will complete its developing of the proposals within ten days and then submit the larger proposal to the Government.
The cost of the AzerSat project is $80-100mln. The satellite will include Europe and part of Asia-Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Iran.
Azerbaijan hopes that by 2008 it will have obtained an orbit path for a satellite, which will be launched only after several years.
As Azerbaijan can only use 20% or 25% of the satellites resources, the Ministry is planning to sell the remaining capacity to countries that will be covered by the satellite.