Now the future of the project dedicated to the continuous monitoring of the migration routes of various animals using radio transmitters and the study of their lives is in question.
According to the statement on the website Icarus, Roscosmos has terminated cooperation with German partners on this international project, the purpose of which is to observe animals from space. "Data transmission from the ISS stopped on March 3, 2022," the short message says. Now the research team will look for alternative ways to continue the project.
Icarus (International Cooperation for Animal Research Using Space) originated in the early 2000s under the leadership of ornithologist Martin Wikelski from the Max Planck Institute for Animal Behavior in Radolfzell (Germany). In 2018, the necessary equipment was installed on the International Space Station — three receiving antennas and one transmitting antenna - testing of the system started in the spring of 2020, and in the fall the research itself began.
Icarus Antenna
Image source: Max Planck Institute for Ornitology, MaxCine
Here's what Vikelski himself said about the project in an interview with TASS in 2018: "Everything really worked when we started cooperation with Russia and received funding from the German Center for Aviation and Cosmonautics (Deutsches Zentrumfuer Luft- und Raumfahrt). So the beginning of the project can be considered 2011-2012. The project was based on long-term cooperation with Russian scientists. <...> For us, this is 16 years of preparation. Everyone put their soul into the work: on the Russian side there is just a fantastic team, and on the German side there are wonderful guys. They are all very rooting for the cause."
Russia provided space systems, Germany - technological developments. The project involves 5G radio transmitters, which include a GPS receiver. Miniature devices - they have been installed on hundreds of animal species (weighing more than 70 grams) around the world - are powered by the sun and are activated only when a satellite is above them. Information about the movement of animals is sent to the receiving station on the Russian module of the ISS. Then the data gets to the ground station in Moscow, and only then to the scientists who upload the results to the free Movebank database.
"Animals can be indicators for weather changes. For example, the flight of geese can estimate the turbulence of the air over the Himalayas. Then we know that animals carry diseases. In addition, there is evidence that animals can predict natural disasters, such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. We have yet to study this ability of theirs. But this direction looks very promising for researchers. There are a lot of aspects where tagging animals is extremely important. Including for the conservation of wildlife and its restoration. All this can be done with the help of our system," Vikelski noted.
On the Russian side, the Institute of Geography of the Russian Academy of Sciences participated in the project, with the help of Icarus transmitters, scientists started 16 more projects. It is not yet known what the future of research is and whether they plan to resume cooperation. There is no information or comments on this topic from the Russian space agency.
However, we recall that almost immediately after the start of the special operation in Ukraine, the German Aviation and Cosmonautics Center turned off its eROSITA telescope at the Spektr-RG orbital astrophysical observatory, located at the L2 Lagrange point, together with Russia. In response, the head of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, said on March 3 that Russian specialists were ceasing to cooperate with Germany on experiments on the International Space Station and would conduct them independently.
