The Roscosmos website features a very interesting news item about a Russian plan to use nanosats to help predict earthquakes.
RIA Novosti quotes Russian Space Systems company director Yury Urlichich as saying that an “earthquake precursor monitoring system” that would include a constellation of nanosats to monitor “special vibrations in the ionosphere [that] can be used to detect the quake.”
Although the article doesn’t say so explicitly, the program appears to be part of the international global natural and industrial emergency aerospace monitoring system (IGMAS) that Russian officials promoted during a heads of space agencies summit in Washington last week. IGMAS program manager and Director of Space Systems R&D Valery Menschikov made a presentation about the system during the gathering, which was sponsored by the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA).