A whole group of Russian spacecraft has started working in near-Earth orbit. Some of them are truly unique, including those created by student and even school teams. Before our eyes, an industry of private space design bureaus is growing in Russia, which in the coming years can create entire satellite groupings in orbit.
On June 27, Roscosmos conducted a batch launch of spacecraft using a Soyuz-2.1b rocket. In addition to the target Meteor spacecraft No. 2-3, 42 more small satellites were sent into space, of which 39 domestic and three foreign. After launching into target orbits in the first decade of July, the satellites began to start working.
Convenient orbit
The target spacecraft of this launch was the Meteor hydrometeosatellite. Meteors are the eyes and ears for many important government departments in Russia. These are meteorologists, scientists of the Institute of Space Research, and the Ministry of Emergency Situations, who have received the ability to track floods and congestion on rivers with the help of "Meteors".
It will operate in a sun-synchronous orbit (an orbit synchronized with the rotation of the Earth). It allows the spacecraft to be over the right place every day at the same time. As a rule, sun-synchronous orbits are 600-800 kilometers above the Earth's surface. The main purpose of Meteor's work will be radar monitoring of the Northern Sea Route.
"Meteor" was brought to the place of work with the help of the Fregat upper stage. To simplify it, this is an additional stage of the rocket that delivers the spacecraft exactly to a given orbit. At the same time, he can repeatedly start the engines – which means that he can dilute the vehicles in different orbits for a group launch.
In addition, the mass of Meteor No. 2-3 is slightly more than three tons, and Soyuz-2.1b puts up to five tons into such an orbit. All this made it possible for Roscosmos specialists to implement a group launch, adding 42 more small spacecraft to the main load.
From school to student
What are small spacecraft and what can they do? One of the most popular formats for such satellites has become a cubesat, assembled from cubes with an edge of 10 centimeters on an aluminum frame. One cube is one element (unit), the most common spacecraft contain three units (3U).
In Russia, there is a Space Pi project of the "Planet Duty Officer" program of the Innovation Promotion Foundation for launching student cubesats with a 3U size limit. The creation of cubesats is financed on a parity basis, by the university and the Foundation, which pays Glavkosmos for their integration into the head part of the launch vehicle. Roscosmos carries out the launch itself with a passing load for free.
According to the Space Pi project, 16 spacecraft went into space in this launch, ten of them were created on the SPUTNIK platform, the main partner of the project. By the way, you can compare the Russian project with foreign analogues. We are still lagging behind the Americans, they have more than 140 cubesats under the NASA CubeSat Launch initiative (CSLI) project, we have 45 so far.
But we have overtaken the Europeans, less than 30 devices have been launched in the ESA Fly my satellite program.
Among these projects, most of the satellites carry serious research or scientific equipment. For example, ArcCube-01 with a payload developed by ANO "FIRON" contains a random number generator on board for organizing a secure data transmission channel.
There are meteorological projects like Vizard-meteo with two cameras for monitoring oil spills in the Arctic developed by NIS and VIZARD. Or even the development of technologies for the future project "Sphere" – ReshUCube-2 for SibGU im. Reshetnev (this is a subsidiary university for one of the largest satellite productions), where experiments with LoRaWAN communication protocols for the Internet of Things are planned.
There is an interesting project from the company "Stratonautics" on the satellite platform "Geoscan". This is the kubsat "StratoSat TK-1" – the mother unit for the orbital server, the picosatellite RUVDS. That is, this cubesat carries a container with even smaller satellites. Working out their separation and communication is the main task of the project.
There was a place even for school spacecraft with absolutely no children's equipment. This is UmKA-1 for Secondary School No. 29 (Podolsk) with a Leptonar-20955K telescope and an astronomical digital camera. It is worth noting that launch containers for cubesats of this format were developed by Aerospace Capital, another Russian private space startup.
Bigger size
There are also eight larger spacecraft. They were launched under the UniverSat program on the basis of Roscosmos reference universities. For such satellites, a mandatory condition for participation is the placement of a unified payload for solving common scientific and applied tasks in the interests of one of the federal customers - for example, the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences or Roshydromet.
Among these devices, one of the most interesting is the Norbi–2, created in cooperation with the ISSF SB RAS, ICI RAS and Novosibirsk State University and the Institute of Microstructure Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In just six units (10x10x60 centimeters) and 10 kilograms of weight, experts managed to squeeze the SOL space telescope to observe the Sun. This is one of the smallest instruments of this class, usually space telescopes are quite massive and require a separate launch.
This device will help scientists to register the radiation of the Sun's corona and solar flares about 2,000 kilometers in size, which cannot be seen from Earth.
In addition to student satellites, seventeen commercial spacecraft were delivered into orbit. Three from foreign customers from the UAE (PHI-Demo), Malaysia and Belarus (BSUSat-2) and fourteen domestic. There is less information about them due to trade secrets. However, it is already known about the beginning of the work of three small spacecraft "Dawn" (№ 1-3) weighing 80 kg each, developed by Bureau 1440 (part of X Holding). These are communications satellites capable of providing low-orbit satellite Internet. "Now the data transfer rate to the device is 12 Mbit/sec, and the delay (the time required to transfer data from the server to the subscriber) is 41 milliseconds. As part of the test mission, there is no task to ensure high speed, but even with such indicators, it is already possible to watch, for example, a movie in HD format," the Ministry of Finance of Russia says.
One of the most promising projects among the launched ones may be two 3U CSTP-1.1 and 1.2 cubesats developed by the company "Special Technology Center" (STC). She is developing a payload for large cubesats. In particular, plans have been announced for the joint development with Samara University of the AIST-ST radar cubesat with a synthesized aperture (SAR) and a resolution of at least 2 m. The production capacities of the STC make it possible to put the production of such radar devices on stream, which will radically strengthen the domestic remote sensing grouping, making it possible to observe the earth's surface in any weather conditions, day and night.
It is often possible to hear an opinion in which the Roscosmos state Corporation is opposed to private space exploration and small startups. Sometimes it is almost said that Roscosmos allegedly sees competitors in these small companies and opposes them with all its might. However, the reality is quite different. Roscosmos directly supports student and private space exploration programs. Including those that allow even a small school project to create and launch its own spacecraft into orbit. The launch on June 27, 2023, illustrates this support and shows the diversity of student space programs, from which many interesting scientific and business projects can grow.
The author thanks Sergey Maltsev, Chief Specialist of Roscosmos Media, for his help in preparing the material
Mikhail Kotov
