Mikhail Kotov — about what went from Baikonur together with the Khayyam satellite
The Soyuz-2.1b carrier rocket with the Fregat upper stage launched on Tuesday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. It launched the Khayyam satellite, built in Russia by order of Iran, and 16 small spacecraft into the orbit of our planet. The latter are micro- and nanosatellites created by leading universities, commercial companies and non-profit organizations.
Cosmonautics, as everyone knows, is one of the most high-tech and expensive industries, especially when it comes to launch vehicles and spacecraft. Their cost in the modern world is tens and sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars, which creates a very serious threshold for entering the market.
However, this is not quite true. There are certain niches in which even very small startups and student teams can engage in cosmonautics.
The smallest satellite
In 1999, the gradual reduction in the size and weight of microelectronic components allowed specialists from California Polytechnic University and Stanford University to develop unified specifications and instructions for the creation of ultra-small spacecraft. Then it was decided to make them from parts, each of which was a cube with an edge of 10 cm and weighing no more than 1 kg. Such a small product, completely lost against the background of most spacecraft of that time, was called a unit (1U). Cubesats (CubeSat) can be either single-unit or assembled, like a constructor, from several parts. As a rule, solar panels for power supply are located on the side faces of the cubesat, and all electronics are mounted in a rigid aluminum structure that makes up the skeleton of the future spacecraft.
It is this format that has become the most popular for most student projects. Ease of assembly, logical design, relative accessibility proved to be decisive arguments in favor of cubesats. Moreover, for many small countries, these devices became the beginning of a national space program, such as ESTCube-1, developed by students of the University of Tartu and being the first Estonian satellite and the first satellite in the world using an electric sail.
So, cubesats are not exclusively student crafts, they are often demonstrators of real technologies. For example, the company Planet (formerly Planet Labs) She created a grouping of satellites for optical imaging of the Earth, relying solely on Dove-2 cubesats of 4U format (10x10x40 cm). These devices photograph the Earth in non-stop mode with a resolution of 3-5 m per pixel.
Our little space
There is also a "nanocosmic" movement in our country — it is gradually developing and becoming more and more widespread.
It's worth starting with the designers of future satellites. There are several of them in Russia, for example, the IntroSat and OrbiCraft training complexes from the Sputnix company or the SiriusSat designers from the Neuro-master space systems laboratory. As a rule, the satellite assembly kit contains a lot of detailed training materials and instructions, however, many startups go further and work on improving the basic models with the addition of new functions.
Then we will stop at the testing stage. For these purposes, they often resort to lifting future microsatellites to a great height with the help of balloons. Such testing allows you to check the performance of the spacecraft for relatively little money. In Russia, for example, the company "Stratonavtika" is engaged in such a check.
But there are still many organizations, movements and foundations that help to realize the first cosmic impulses. Among them is the company "Aerospace Capital", a developer and manufacturer of separation systems for CubeSat—format spacecraft. Quite a few popularization projects organize training for future satellite creators, offering both online courses and offline intensive courses, as does the Summer Space School. The All-Russian Space pi movement from the Innovation Promotion Foundation also contributes to the implementation of student satellite projects. I would also like to note the assistance of Roscosmos to young engineers — the organization often allows them to launch their spacecraft as a payload, coupled with their projects.
As a result, the joint efforts of several organizations are behind the launch of such small spacecraft.
16 dreams of space
Early this morning, 16 small Russian spacecraft went into space: CubeSX-HSE-2, Monitor-1, UTMN, Cyclops, Siren, KAI-1, Kuzbass-300, Skoltech-B1, Skoltech-B2, Polytech Universe-1, Polytech Universe-2, Vizard, Geoscan-Edelweiss, MIET-AIS, ISOI and ReshUCube. Most of them are university projects, while some were created by Russian companies and startups. All of them will perform a variety of tasks, including solving real problems.
For example, the Skoltech-B1 and Skoltech-B2 spacecraft have the main task of testing the technology of inter-satellite communication at a long distance. KAI-1 will be able to transmit a presence signal for amateur radio service — it will become a kind of beacon for radio amateurs of our planet. Many specialists who have connected their lives with space recall that their interest began in many ways with such radio communication sessions.
Geoscan-Edelweiss, developed by Geoscan Group of Companies, is intended for flight tests of the Geoscan 3U satellite platform — the satellite will have to study the possibility of moving nanosatellites to lower orbits to reduce the amount of space debris in the orbital space.
Schoolchildren, together with specialists from NIS LLC and Vizard LLC, have created the Vizard satellite, which is expected to allow studying the direction of ice drift and ensuring the safety of navigation in the Arctic Ocean.
Spacecraft of students and scientists of the Moscow Institute of Electronic Technology (MIET) MIET-AIS is programmed to receive a signal from automatic information system (AIS) transmitters installed on ships for the purpose of their subsequent analysis. This information is necessary to prevent collisions of ships and control their movement.
The CubeSX-HSE-2 satellite of the Higher School of Economics is expected to monitor the Earth's surface of the Arctic region. And the UTMN spacecraft, developed by schoolchildren of the Tyumen Region, as well as students and employees of Tyumen State University (TSU), is equipped with a camera that allows you to investigate oil spills in the Arctic and predict the development of the environmental situation in this territory.
The Monitor-1 spacecraft, developed by students and scientists of the D.V. Skobeltsyn Research Institute of Nuclear Physics of Moscow State University, will monitor the dangerous radiation flows of protons from solar flares that create additional radiation loads on airplanes.
Another satellite will study the radiation situation in orbit and research the Earth's magnetic field — ReshUCube, created by a team from the Siberian State University of Science and Technology of Krasnoyarsk.
Remote sensing of the Earth will also be carried out by CubeSat ISOI from ISOI RAS using a hyperspectral system. In other words, the camera of this satellite sees more colors than the human eye, which increases the amount of information extracted from the footage. For example, in this way, green plants can be better distinguished in the near infrared spectrum or the degree of ripening of crops can be determined.
D.F. Ustinov Voenmeh BSTU, with the joint participation of schoolchildren, students and university staff, developed the Cyclops system to study the degradation of the characteristics of materials and parameters of electronic devices in outer space.
The staff of the Engineering Center of the National Research University "BelSU" LLC has prepared the Siren satellite, the main task of which is to study the growth and development of microclones of plants in a culture environment in zero gravity. As a payload on the satellite, there is a module consisting of a capsule with lilac sprouts fixed with a special nutrient gel—like solution, as well as with cameras and LEDs.
The equipment of the Kuzbass-300 satellite, developed by schoolchildren of the Kemerovo region, students and scientists of the Kuzbass State Technical University (KuzSTU), will allow transmitting telemetry data, voice messages and images to Earth.
Thus, even such seemingly small spacecraft are capable of important and serious research. It is gratifying that there are interested talented young people, and an experienced scientific community contributing to the development, and various companies and organizations that contribute. In the end, it is precisely such projects that are able to gradually grow a new generation of specialists for cosmonautics.
