Armenian Observatory to monitor space debris in 2012

A new program kicks off at the Byurakan Observatory, with the support of Russian Federal Space Agency, to monitor space debris. It will start next January 2012, head of the Observatory Hayk Harutyunyan told journalists today.

The Observatory will be included in the global network, currently monitoring space debris and working on the prevention of dangerous situations in the near-Earth space.

More than ten states applied for an opportunity to participate in the program, which is sponsored by the UN.

The project, which is initiated by Russian Federal agency Rossotrudnichestvo (Russian State Cooperation), will be funded by the Russian Space Agency (ROSCosmos) and a total of $2 million will be invested.

This will enable five small telescopes to be purchased within the framework of the project.

Soyuz Spacecraft Loss: Russian Prosecutors Claim Management and Workers Negligent

The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office blames the loss of the Express-AM4 telecommunications satellite Aug. 18 and the Progress M-12M space freighter six days later on employee negligence.

The Prosecution Office has proposed introducing criminal punishment for those found guilty of causing serious damage to the country’s space industry, the state-owned RIA Novosti news agency reported Oct. 18.

“Both incidents were the result of negligence by employees of state space industry enterprises subordinate to [Russian space agency] Roscosmos, [negligence] during control procedures, as well as the absence of proper control by Roscosmos of decision-making by authorised persons,” Marina Gridneva, spokeswoman for the prosecutor’s office, said.

In addition to possible criminal punishment, the Prosecutor General’s Office is demanding fines and reprimands for those responsible for the loss of the spacecraft.

Russia to build aerospace defence shield

Russia will build a national aerospace defense shield by the end of 2011, Chairman of the Federation Council Committee on Defense and Security Viktor Ozerov told reporters on Tuesday in the cosmonauts' training center near Moscow. He believes that a combined aerospace defense force will cooperate more effectively with NATO's European anti-missile defense system.

Last year, President Medvedev approved a plan to merge the Space Forces created in 2001, the Air Defense Forces and also the missile attack warning and space surveillance systems into a single military force. Commenting on the issue, Viktor Ozerov said as follows:

"Space Forces is a branch of the Russian army that focuses on space and ground intelligence, as well as anti-missile security. Cooperation with Russia on anti-missile defence was named among the priorities at the latest Russia-NATO summit in Lisbon. Russia and NATO member states have managed to agree on some aspects of anti-missile shield in Europe, though some difficulties remain with adjusting anti-missile systems of Russia, the US and that of NATO to each other."

During the talks in the Cosmonaut Training Center outside Moscow, deputy chairman of the Russian Federal Space Agency Vitaly Davydov commented on the planned Moon and Mars missions, adding that Russia has been working on a program for the Solar system exploration through 2030.

"President Medvedev asked us to present a program for space exploration until 2030. Before we start making preparations for a piloted Mars mission, we expect to launch several missions to the Moon."

These manned missions may be launched from Russia's new spaceport "Vostochny", which is currently being built in Amur region. The first unmanned capsule is due to take off from the Vostochny in 2015, while the first piloted mission is scheduled for 2018.

Soyuz Progress Launches as NASA Shuttle Crew Prepares

The ISS Progress 42 resupply craft launched Wednesday morning to replenish the International Space Station. Launch was at 9:05 a.m. EDT (7:05 p.m. Kazakhstan time) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. The Russian cargo craft will dock to the Pirs docking compartment at 10:29 a.m. Friday.

The new cargo ship will dock to the same port vacated by the ISS Progress 41 cargo craft, which undocked last week and was deorbited Tuesday morning, disposing of station trash, after engineering tests. The new Progress is loaded with 1,940 pounds of propellant, 110 pounds of oxygen and air, 926 pounds of water and 2,976 pounds of maintenance hardware, experiment equipment and resupply items.

Space shuttle Endeavour will launch Friday at 3:47 p.m. to deliver the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer and spare parts to the orbital laboratory. The STS-134 mission is scheduled to last 14 days and will be Endeavour's last flight. The four spacewalks planned while Endeavour is docked at the station also will be the last performed by shuttle astronauts.

While the crew members await the new resupply craft and the shuttle they continue with science. The Expedition 27 crew also is at work maintaining station systems throughout the U.S. and Russian orbital segments.

Flight Engineer Paolo Nespoli measured his blood pressure and collected blood and urine samples for a study that measures heart performance during long-duration space missions. The ongoing investigation seeks to determine if blood pressure and volume can be maintained at the same level in microgravity as on the ground.

Flight Engineer Ron Garan worked in the Japanese Kibo laboratory to replace an ethernet hub and multiplexer in a data management system rack. Garan also took part in CsPINS, a Japanese experiment that observes how cucumber seedlings adapt to microgravity.

Flight Engineer Cady Coleman set up gear to collect microbes and monitored a dosimeter to measure radiation. She also connected a robotics work station display panel in the Destiny lab and tested video downlink for arriving and departing Russian spacecraft.

Commander Dmitry Kondratyev assisted Coleman during the video downlink test. He also monitored the Elektron oxygen generator and performed some plumbing work on a Russian bathroom system.

Flight Engineer Andrey Borisenko set up gear for the Coulomb Crystal experiment. The Russian investigation gathers data about charged particles inside the microgravity environment of the space station. He also conducted a session of the Interaction experiment that observes interactions between station crew members and ground personnel.

Flight Engineer Alexander Samokutyaev worked on maintenance throughout the Russian segment of the station. Samokutyaev also worked on the Typology experiment which studies how a crew member thinks and works in microgravity.

Russian Space Program is grossly underfunded

Russia is not in a position to carry out global space programs single-handedly and should team up with India and Kazakhstan, veteran rocket scientist Boris Chertok said on Tuesday.

He said Russian space programs are grossly underfunded compared to similar projects in the United States and China.

"The United States spends about 10 times as much on space programs as Russia," he said. "At present there are three [space] poles - Russia, the United States and China."

To preserve its positions in space research Russia needs to pool efforts with India and Kazakhstan, he added.

"As for China, it has sufficient resources to undertake space programs on its own," Chertok also said.

Russia's Spaceship Debris Splashes Down Into Pacific Ocean

The Russian space cargo ship Progress M-08M left orbit and fell into the Pacific Monday after three month of work at the International Space Station (ISS), reported the Mission Control Center outside Moscow.

"As calculated by Mission Control ballistics experts, the Progress M-08M's debris, which did not burn up in the thick layers of the atmosphere, fell into the southern part of the Pacific Ocean far away from navigation routes at 09:07 a.m. Moscow time (0607GMT)," a Mission Control spokesman was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying.

The Progress undocked from the Russian module Pirs first and then left the orbit, the control center said.

The cargo ship's place at the ISS will be taken by the Progress M-09M, which is scheduled to blast off from the Baikonur space center on Jan. 28.

The Progress M-08M, launched on Oct. 27, 2010, on a Soyuz-U carrier rocket, reached the ISS in three days carrying 2.5 tons of cargo.

Russian President Reprimands RSA

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has formally reprimanded the chief of his country's national space agency and fired two other high-ranking space officials over the loss of three state-of-the-art navigation satellites in a botched rocket launch earlier this month.

The decision, announced by the Kremlin today (Dec. 29), comes after an investigation into the Dec. 5 launch failure of a Russian-built Proton rocket carrying three new Glonass-M navigation satellites.

The satellites never reached orbit. Instead, they plunged back to Earth and crashed in the Pacific Ocean north of Hawaii.

NASA ISS Expedition 25 Crew returns safely

Expedition 25 Commander Doug Wheelock and Flight Engineers Shannon Walker and Fyodor Yurchikhin safely landed their Soyuz spacecraft on the Kazakhstan steppe Thursday, wrapping up a five-month stay aboard the International Space Station.

Russian cosmonaut Yurchikhin, the Soyuz commander, was at the controls of the spacecraft as it undocked at 8:23 p.m. EST from the station's Rassvet module. The trio landed at 11:46 p.m. (10:46 a.m. on Nov. 26 local time) at a site northeast of the town of Arkalyk.

Working in frigid temperatures, Russian recovery teams were on hand within minutes to help the crew exit the Soyuz vehicle and re-adjust to gravity.

› View video of Soyuz landing

The trio launched aboard the Soyuz TMA-19 spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on June 15. As members of the Expedition 24 and 25 crews, they spent 163 days in space, 161 of them aboard the station, and celebrated the 10th anniversary of continuous human life, work and research by international crews aboard the station on Nov. 2.

During their mission, the Expedition 24 and 25 crew members worked on more than 120 microgravity experiments in human research; biology and biotechnology; physical and materials sciences; technology development; and Earth and space sciences.

Russia to launch half of carrier rockets from Far East space centre by 2020

Russia to launch half of carrier from Far East space centre by 2020. Photo courtesy RIA Novosti.

The space centre is intended as a "new stage in the development of Russian cosmonautics." 

It will host almost 1,500 facilities, including two launch systems, a training centre, and oxygen and hydrogen generation plants, Viktor Remishevsky said during a round table meeting in the Far Eastern Amur Region.

"A new, modern town, comfortable in every respect and intended for specialists in the space sphere and their families will be created here," Remishevsky said.

The new space centre is being created using the most advanced technologies, which minimise environmental damage, said the chief designer of a company involved in the construction of the space centre.

Russia currently uses two launch sites: the Baikonur space centre in Kazakhstan, which it has leased to ESA and Nasa, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the Plesetsk space centre in northwest Russia.

The new space centre, which is forecast to employ 20,000-25,000 people, will ensure Russia's independence in the launch of piloted space vehicles, currently carried out at Baikonur.

The Russian government intends to spend 24.7 billion rubles (around $811,000) on the construction, which is expected to start in 2011.

Vostochny is expected to be put into operation in 2015 and be used for launching cargo spacecraft and satellites at the first stage. It is planned that manned spacecraft will not be launched from the space centre before 2018.

Russia to test Mars lander for 2011 flight

Russian scientists say they're preparing to test an unmanned lander for a 2011 mission to Phobos, one of the moons of Mars.

The Phobos-Grunt spacecraft will land on the surface of Phobos, take soil samples and return them to Earth, RIA Novosti reported Friday.

"The aim of the test is to narrow down the lander's projected impact location on the surface of the Earth," a statement by Russia's Central Aerodynamic Institute said.

"As far as the lander ... does not include any signaling equipment ... narrowing down its projected impact area will make the search for it easier," the statement said.

The project was conceived in 1999, and in June 2006 the Russian aerospace company NPO Lavochkin started manufacturing and testing the development
version of the spacecraft's on-board equipment.

The mission is expected to begin in November 2011 and last some 330 days, RIA Novosti said.

Russian aerospace to send mission to Mercury

Russian aerospace to send mission to Mercury in 4-5 years

Russian NPO Lavochkin intends to send an interplanetary research mission to Mercury in 4-5 years, Lavochkin’s deputy general designer said at the Farnborough International Airshow 2010.

“[The mission will consist of] a flight to Mercury and a landing on its surface,” Maxim Martynov said. “We assume that the device will be a modified Phobos-Grunt satellite.”

He added that the NPO is currently engaged in a pre-design mission.

Martynov also said that similar missions are planned for Venus and the Moon.

Mercury is the smallest planet in the Solar System and the closest planet to the Sun, orbiting it once every 87.969 days.

Phobos-Grunt is a planned Russian return mission to Phobos, one of the moons of Mars. It is scheduled to be launched in 2011. The mission will study the surface of Phobos and then fly back to Earth with soil samples.

Russia And Europe: Join Forces To Protect Earth From Asteroids

Russia And Europe May Join Forces To Protect Earth From Asteroids

Russian space officials and members of the European Commission will meet in early July to discuss joining forces against thousands of potentially hazardous asteroids, the head of the Russian Federal Space Agency Roscosmos said.

Despite the growing concern about the asteroid threat, no anti-asteroid defense programs have been developed in practice so far, with only several theoretical concepts being studied. At a meeting in Moscow on July 7, the European Commission will consider Roscosmos's proposal to start a joint anti-asteroid project with the European Union.

"I received a letter, in which the European Commission proposes to meet on July 7 in Roscosmos with scientists and engineers of the Federal Space Agency, the Russian Academy of Sciences and other institutions and organizations. At the meeting, the Russian bid to start a joint project with the EU will be considered," Anatoly Perminov said.

In his Wednesday's report to Roscosmos, the head of the Astronomy Institute at the Russian Academy of Sciences, Boris Shustov, said Russian scientists had detected a total of 6,960 near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) as of April 10.

The vast majority - 6,070 space bodies, or 87.2% of the total - are asteroids measuring from 100 meters to 1,000 meters in diameter. Others are 48 comets (1.2%) and 806 asteroids measuring more than a thousand of meters in diameter (11.6 %).

RSA Kliper: Soyuz 100 Times More Reliable Than NASA Shuttle

Soyuz 100 Times More Reliable Than Shuttle

In 2004, Russian space officials announced that the Soyuz will be replaced by early 2011 with the new Kliper and Parom spacecrafts.

However, since then the Kliper appears to have been indefinitely postponed due to lack of government funding, and it has been announced that the Soyuz will receive an upgrade to make it suitable for up to one year in space, as well as new digital interior displays and updated docking equipment.

This new version, known as Soyuz TMAT, could enter service around 2010.

ESA was approached re the provion of joint funding of the development in 2004 but was put under pressure by NASA to turn down the offer on the basis that NASA's replacement Shuttle will be in place.

NASA: Soyuz TMA-17 rocket launches from Kazakhstan

The Soyuz TMA-17 rocket launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Monday, Dec. 21, 2009 carrying Expedition 22 NASA Flight Engineer Timothy J. Creamer of the U.S., Soyuz Commander Oleg Kotov of Russia and Flight Engineer Soichi Noguchi of Japan to the International Space Station.

(Photo Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls)

RSA: Russian Cosmonaut Feoktistov Dies At 83

Well-known spaceship designer and one of the Soviet Union's first cosmonauts, Konstantin Feoktistov, has died at 83 in Moscow, the Russian space agency Roscosmos said Sunday.


"We report with regret that Konstantin Feoktistov, a famous Soviet cosmonaut, died in Moscow on Saturday. Information on the funeral service, place and time of the burial will be available later," a Roscosmos spokesman said.

Feoktistov was one of those who designed Soyuz and Progress spaceships, and the Salyut and Mir space stations until 1990. From 1990 he worked as a professor at a Moscow technical university.

Feoktistov, who was the only non-Communist cosmonaut in the Soviet Union, made a spaceflight on board the Voskhod spaceship in 1964. He was awarded the title of the Hero of the Soviet Union for that first group spaceflight in history.

A crater on the Moon is named after Feoktistov.

What is Solar Sailing?

Solar sail propulsion is simple in concept. Light photons bounce onto a mirror-like aluminized Mylar sail. As each photon hits, its momentum is transmitted to the spacecraft.

Photons have no mass but lots of energy, so a solar sail space probe requires no onboard fuel. The force acts continuously, meaning a solar sail can eventually reach speeds five to ten times greater than any chemical rocket.

Russia, the U.S. and the European Space Agency all started solar sail missions and technology programs but cut them back when money got tight. Japan, we are happy to say, is now moving ahead to develop an innovative solar sail and solar-powered ion drive hybrid.

Yet solar sail propulsion remains largely neglected. That's why the Society has long championed efforts to prove its value. We partnered with Cosmos Studios on the far-sighted Cosmos 1 solar sail project. But technology has advanced enormously since then. We can do more in a fraction of the size, with a fraction of the weight and at a fraction of the cost. This has led us to re-think everything…and what we've arrived at is far more advanced, and ultimately far more valuable.

This technology also opens up many new possibilities for piggyback launching into Earth orbit, which is desperately needed since launch vehicles have been a hindrance preventing solar sail flight. We're considering several launch possibilities and will select the most reliable one that matches our schedule and final orbit choice best.

What is Russia's Response to the US Shuttle Discovery Launch? Are they far Behind?