The Director-General of the Russian Space Corporation Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, announced that they have prepared detailed satellite images of Beirut Port before and after the explosion in order to hand them over to the Lebanese authorities.
This came in statements made by Rogozin, before the signing of a memorandum of cooperation between Roscosmos and the TASS news agency.
Rogozin revealed that he signed a document containing “detailed enough pictures” in response to the request of the Lebanese authorities regarding the explosion that affected the port of Beirut on August 4th, 2020.
He stated that the Lebanese request was not directly addressed to Roscosmos but to the TASS agency.
He added that the institution on its own initiative, and based on satellite images taken on the day of the explosion, conducted a detailed analysis of the condition of the port of Beirut before and after the explosion.
The Russian official pointed out the importance of information of this kind to assess the size of the material losses and understand the nature of the event, adding that these might be “irreplaceable images.”
Roscosmos reported that the images of the aftermath of the explosion taken by the Canopus B device were published in open sources on August 5th, 2020, the day after the explosion.
In addition, another source in the Russian space rocket manufacturing sector confirmed that the Director-General of Roscosmos directed the preparation of materials related to the Beirut Port Explosion.
Back in October, President Michel Aoun had formally asked Russia to obtain satellite images of the day of the explosion. This happened during his meeting with the Russian envoy to Beirut, Aleksandr Rudakov, according to a statement made by the Lebanese Presidency
On October 22nd, Russian President Vladimir Putin has also stated, during his participation in the Valdai Club Discussion, that he will not hesitate to offer satellite images of the Beirut Port if they could aid in the probe.
Judge Tarek Bitar, the primary investigating judge in the Beirut Blast Probe, had also submitted back in May requests to satellite-owning countries, in an attempt to obtain images that might aid the probe into the explosion.
