The economic, scientific, geopolitical, defence and ecological interests of
Russia, and progress in the development of remote methods, together with t
he increased cost of exploitation of Russia's research fleet and the forced
reduction of the latter, strongly dictate the need for an accelerated deve
lopment of studies of the ocean from space. The paper describes the bases f
or the conception of the development of such studies from 1996 to 2015 and
presents a three-stage programme ending with the creation of the Russian oc
eanological satellite system (ROSS). This conception relies upon spacecraft
of the 'Meteor-3' and 'Resurs-Arktika' type, traditional methods of remote
sensing and promising national developments.