Russia has managed to quadruple the service life of a group of communications satellites, according to the information technologies and communications minister, Leonid Reiman.
This had now places Russia sixth in the world according to this index. He also said that eight new satellites had been launched since 2000. "All these satellites are multi-purpose, and now we cover almost the whole globe except for a small part in the centre of the U.S.A" . Reiman said five old satellites remained in orbit. The Russian satellite group presently has 100 satellites, whereas the US orbital group consists of 425 satellites.