Russian Space Program: News & Discussion #1

kvs wrote:

Kyo wrote:Croc tears.

As if Russia needs to ask permission from America and its vassals and sycophants.  

Russia is never consulted on war preparations aimed squarely at it by NATO.   So NATO can go and f*ck itself
before Russia will be following some non-existent "gentleman's agreement" that only exists as a concoction of
the NATO propaganda media.

If I recall right both Russia and China urged America some 9 months ago to sign a multi-lateral agreement on militarization/weaponization of space, and the US refused to sign it.

Yup Mag

U.S. Opposes New Draft Treaty from China and Russia Banning Space Weapons

Eight days aboard capsule as space flight experiment takes all-female flyers 'to the Moon'

It's the latest in a lengthy series of tests carried out by Russia's Institute of Biomedical Problems

MOSCOW, October 28. /TASS/. Six women aged from 22 to 34 embarked on a simulated flight to the Moon on Wednesday in a ground-based experiment conceived and monitored by Russia's Institute of Biomedical Problems.

Their eight-day unpaid Moon 2015 mission confronts them with 30 experiments aboard a mock-up environment of six cabins, kitchen, bathroom and gym akin to life on the International Space Station ISS.

It's the latest in a lengthy series of tests carried out by institute specialists studying the effects on human physiology and emotions during life among the stars. The first mission, launched in 1967, replicated 12 months on a spacecraft.

Life-support systems will sustain the crew as a list of journey tasks mounts a search for a missing moon rover and charts the progress of life-science experiments.

Showers and make-up have been left behind outside the sealed capsule, explained uniformed crew members Tatiana Shiguyeva and Darya Komissarova before departure, noting an unfamiliar hygiene regime ahead for them but which is now commonplace for flyers aboard the ISS orbiter.

So, too, is male company left behind, they add, assessing busy workdays ahead and leisure hours constrained for the time being to reading, games to play and films to watch.

Russia Training Four Monkeys To Go To Mars In 2017

Russians are aiming to be the first to send animals to Mars, and are training monkeys to be ready for a mission to the red planet by 2017.

http://www.techtimes.com/articles/100461/20151028/russia-training-four-monkeys-to-go-to-mars-in-2017.htm



My understanding is that they want to test if living things can actually survive the six month trip through space it takes to reach mars.

Zivo wrote:Russia Training Four Monkeys To Go To Mars In 2017

Russians are aiming to be the first to send animals to Mars, and are training monkeys to be ready for a mission to the red planet by 2017.

http://www.techtimes.com/articles/100461/20151028/russia-training-four-monkeys-to-go-to-mars-in-2017.htm



My understanding is that they want to test if living things can actually survive the six month trip through space it takes to reach mars.

That is worthwhile but stupid at the same time.   Let the Americans get there via inertial navigation.   Russia needs to send the first propelled
craft to Mars.   Use nuclear powered ion engines and produce at least a partial artificial gravity by accelerating to the mid point and then
decelerating at that same rate.   They can get to Mars in under a month.   Now that would be impressive even if they don't land on the planet.

The launch of the Russian space system "Arktika" postponed due to sanctions РИА Новости http://ria.ru/science/20151102/1312124987.html#ixzz3qJS5HM7K

The silver lining is this:

"Now we see that the first unit" Elektro A "works, but it has comments. Therefore, we have significantly upgraded the" Electro L "number two. Similarly, we" Arctic "decided to upgrade to avoid problems arising from the first device "Electric L". But the difference is that both devices "Electro L" manufactured by us with the use of foreign elements. Chinese electronic-component base we do not use, so expect mainly on the Russian electronics industry, "- explains the head of the NGO.

So the craft will make its debut in 2017 due to sanctioned parts but it will be using Russian components instead.

The orbital complex "Resurs-P" was put into operation

Russian Space Agency urged to restore COSPAS-SARSAT low-orbit segment

The proposal was put forward in the process of coordination of the draft Federal Space Program for 2016-2025

MOSCOW, November 12. /TASS/. The Russian Transport Ministry has requested the Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) to restore the low-orbit segment of the Cospas-Sarsat international search and rescue satellite system, a ministry official said on Thursday.

According to the international commitments, Russia should have at least two orbiting satellites in the system. The proposal was put forward in the process of coordination of the draft Federal Space Program for 2016-2025.

"The Ministry of Transport and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation consider it necessary for Russia to fulfill its international obligations in part regarding the maintenance of the COSPAS-SARSAT system’s low-orbit segment," Director of the Transport Ministry’s development programs department Alexey Semenov told the Izvestia daily. "The possibility of installing equipment on Russian spacecraft is currently considered."

The COSPAS-SARSAT system was established in 1979 by the USSR, France, the United States and Canada. Now the system comprises 6 satellites in low orbits and 8 satellites in geostationary orbit (one of them is Russia’s Electro-L satellite). The satellites receive SOS signals, transmitted by emergency beacons installed on ships, aircraft or worn by hiking tourists. According to statistics, in 2012 alone the beacons helped rescue more than 600 people.

"The Russian Federation as the Soviet Union’s legal successor has an obligation to maintain at least two low-orbit Cospas-Sarsat spacecraft," said Andrey Kuropyatnikov, director general of the Morsviazsputnik state company that ensures the functioning of the Russian segment of the system. "We regularly receive reminders and suggestions from the partners of our commitments, which unfortunately, are not met. We constantly inform the Federal Space Agency of the existence of these commitments."

According to him, Roscosmos considers it necessary to install the Cospas-Sarsat equipment as an additional payload on the Meteor 2.1 and Meteor 2.2 satellites. "These spacecraft by the ballistic parameters of the orbit suit us the most. We expect the approval of this decision, as all the technical issues have been settled," Kuropyatnikov said.

The COSPAS-SARSAT system operates with both low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites as well as geostationary (GSO) satellites on the frequencies 121.5 MHz and 243 MHz and in the band 406-406.1 MHz. COSPAS is a Russian acronym for Space System for Search of Distress Vessels and SARSAT means Search and Rescue Satellite-Aided Tracking.

The COSPAS-SARSAT uses both geostationary search and rescue (GEOSAR) satellites and low earth orbit search and rescue (LEOSAR) satellites. The geostationary satellites see a large part of the world. These geostationary satellites provide immediate alerting and identification of 406 MHz beacons. However, the GEOSAR satellites are not able to determine the location of the beacon. They can, however, provide immediate alerts. Ideally, a SARSAT or COSPAS LEOSAR satellite will fly over the beacon within the next hour and calculate the location.

magnumcromagnon wrote:The orbital complex "Resurs-P" was put into operation

nice dual use satelite. russia needs this one badly for economics as military. next one will be ready to launch in spring.

The tests of the reactor vessel to the space successfully completed in Russia

Big news guys!

Well folks don't shoot the messenger...

but there is one Russian kid who claims since he was 7 year old that he remember a past life
in mars.  and that a war happened there and killed him. and made him reincarnate on this planet.   I know kids like to made up things and invent things..but his mind is truly of a genius ,if creating stories that will made  George lucas feel embarrassed of being so behind him. Definitively that Russian kid will become billionaire if he start writing for space movies. .but if what he says is true.. then it will be really crazy and surpass any science fiction or movie.  He even explained and interviewer how Alien Ships operate with many technical concepts. How in a previous life they wanted to turn Jupiter into a second Sun. and how Lemurian Scientist.. (a supposed advanced race in Earth ) destroyed the planet.. in any case.. Listen him. A fraud? or the guy is really dam impressive creatively making stories as if lived them.

Why i post all this.. because according to him.. he told Mars had water and an atmosphere like earth before the war near a million years ago ,and that there remain few living beings in the planet. and that they had the capability to travel to any part of solar system for mining.

He is apparently in a special school for children with special abilities in Russia and is being followed. People with knowledge in medicine or astronomy have been very impressed with the knowledge he have on the things that can be verified , in subjects he is not supposed to know even less understand.

http://projectcamelot.org/indigo_boy_from_mars.html

here is an interview with the Russian genius kid...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1Y0mLV8aRs

People who love space and galaxy and planets travel will surely will wish any of such things were not just fantasy but true.. well if you think a kid is too much of an insult for you.
let me give you this link of a former NASA employeer what he says about some clear cut evidence of very highly intelligent life outside earth ,that NASA have been hidden to public. But that he is revealing to the public.  Basically Photos of Cygar shaped Giants Space ships caught on the rings of Saturn.. that have the size of planet earth and that they move in intelligent ways.. and that operates in the Rings of saturn.. His theory is that somehow that phenomenon that he thinks have to be Intelligent extraterrestial life with space ships ,is directly connected with the creation of the Rings of Saturn.    so thats the opinion of a real scientist.. DR Norman Bergrun, and  This is when Fantasy ,conspire with reality.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibT4SFNcGcY

But it could be just a phenomenon of nature or space that no one have discovered yet and exist.
Russia just last year for example found evidence of living bacterial like things that grow in space orbit and grow in the space station ,and feeds with radiation..crazy stuff.  So we know nothing
of whats going on there in space. or what could be possible.
It will be logical to think ,that one day US or Russia will be mining in the moon and traveling
to mars with humans and creating colonies once technology gets there..no big deal with that fact..but the question should be then.. what will happen after 1,000 or more years if the human civilization master the solar system traveling and don't auto destruct themselves before that of course and have one thousand times better space technology.. Wouldn't it be possible and logical to think Humans onces they master space travel in solar system..they will create colonies
in all planets and create artificial very huge space stations in space of the size of countries?
creating space stations of the size of the moon? Doing experiments with the solar system planets to try to make them more friendly for us to live? i think so.. if in a thousand years it should be possible. Already there are scientist for example claiming that using thousands and thousands of nuclear weapons in Mars it should be possible to improve the atmosphere there for human living. what all this means is that the curiosity and the desire to create more and more
and become "like Gods" is a human natural feeling. You can see this already with the attempts of scientist of cloning humans or trying to bring back Dinosaurs. All this means that all things we never though before to be remotely possible ,now they are or the theory of the possibility already exist.. Time traveling anyone? Paralell universes? Quantum physics says Yes.

In another 1,000 years ,regardless of the videos above i really think we will be creating
artificial cities or artificial asteroids in space for human living. and that could be programed
to travel any place.

Wait those that mean that Science and technology when become so and so advanced over milleniums will allow human beings to be like Gods and literary create or improve planets?
In theory it looks like it will become a reality. and if we are not alone in the universe as many
believe..then we will not have to wait a thousand years more..and the evidence should exist already by just looking at space with powerful telescopes .or by sending rovers to other planets. But naturally no nations who discover such ground breaking things will like to share that information to keep it as some kind of scientific advantage.

sepheronx wrote:The tests of the reactor vessel to the space successfully completed in Russia

Big news guys!

Definately, although development is ongoing

PapaDragon wrote:
Vann, I have overwhelming urge to shoot a messenger right about now...

The reactor prototype design will be finalized in 2016 with the commencement of its construction. Also, there will be
initiated the construction of an experimental facility called "Resource" in 2016 to test the reactor prototype on Earth.
This project is progressing well I would say.

I hope that any Russian Mars mission uses active propulsion. It's time to leave the 1960s in the 1960s.

A reactor would be the ideal power supply for a long range mission... in particular for powering a manned capsule for a mission to Mars and beyond, but also for continuous powering of ion engines in significant numbers.

For those not familiar with the technology an ion engine is basically an electric engine that uses exotic elements like Xenon. Electrons are stripped from the atoms which gives the element a charge... once it has a charge then it can be accelerated magnetically and that is the key. The magnets are used to accelerate atoms of Xenon up to enormous speeds which are then released. Because we are talking about atoms rather than tons of material you could run the engine non stop for a year and only use a few kgs of material, but the key to the design is that the speed limit of the space ship this is attached to is related directed to the exhaust speed of the propellent so they have the potential to travel at enormous speeds... eventually.

If you were to put your hand into the exhaust flow of a running ion engine it would feel like a light breeze because of the very low mass of the particle flow.

The key in the future however will be to increase the flow and thrust levels to a useful acceleration speed. Long periods in empty space is bad for the human anatomy... with current rocket technology you get high g acceleration for a few minutes and then you coast for months in zero gravity and then as you approach your target location you rotate the space craft 180 degrees and fire the main engines again to slow down. Food and air will be recycled but fuel use will change the weight of the craft. This means for a rocket mission you need to work out the weight of the craft and its speed to its destination and work out how much fuel weight you will need to slow down the craft. Then you need to add that fuel weight to the craft weight because that is the mass you have to deliver to the target area so you can then work out how much fuel you will need to burn to accelerate the craft and the slowing down fuel and add that to the total weight.

In comparison an ion engine working all the way offers the benefits of a micro gravity all the way so there will be an up and down and air circulation in the craft will be easier (in zero gravity you would suffocate as you used up all the oxygen near you and replaced it with CO2... so you need fans constantly blowing fresh air around and through the CO2 scrubbers.)

The weight of the craft would change a lot less as the fuel is burned much less quickly and a small fraction of fuel is needed for the trip. For a short range trip the micro gravity effect would make an ion engine still useful but it is longer trips where its true potential is revealed... a rocket engine accelerates rapidly and then coasts so it will streak away from an ion powered craft in the first 10 minutes of flight but then it will stop accelerating and will not change speed until it has almost reached its destination. In comparison the ion powered craft will slowly accelerate until it passes the rocket powered ship after a week or so.... the point is that the top speed of the ion powered craft will be much much higher and with micro gravity the trip will be much more comfortable and even though about half way there it will rotate and start to slow down (it would take as long to slow down as it took to accelerate but that just means micro gravity all the way which is a good thing.) the ion powered craft will still arrive at the destination months before the rocket powered craft....

In fact the ideal would probably be a hybrid that uses ion engines to accelerate 4/5ths of the trip and then decelerates for 1/5th of the trip using ion engines and then a rocket to lose speed rapidly near the destination would reduce trip times enormously and offer the best of both worlds... highest possible speed average and microgravity pretty much all the way.... the last week of decelleration from the ion engine replaced by a few minutes rocket burn so you can get there faster.

To create anykind of gravity you need acceleration or a centrifugal force applied to the crew which is also the only possible way to create "gravity" right now even tho not used due complexity.


Maybe you can give an explanation how the entire life support system works, how oxygen is refurbished over long periods in space with no supplies and how CO2 is filtered and how the Life Support System is looking in scheme? Thanks in advance.

To create anykind of gravity you need acceleration or a centrifugal force applied to the crew which is also the only possible way to create "gravity" right now even tho not used due complexity.

Spinning the manned portion of the space craft would create a sort of artificial gravity... but what I am talking about is Ion propulsion running for the entire flight to the target so constant acceleration.

It would not be practical for 1g acceleration... or even 0.5g acceleration, but even a micro gravity of 0.1g would make everything easier and simpler on the vessel... there would be an up and down... and the flight time would be dramatically reduced.

The air supply and for that matter the food and water supply would all be recycled... not all of the air you breath out is CO2... otherwise mouth to mouth resusitation would be lethal rather than life giving.

Very simply the systems that work on nuclear powered submarines for 3 month trips underwater also work in space. separate the CO2 and then strip off the carbon atoms... even with plant life growing on board to process the air and provide food would be the most efficient.

Ideally before you launch the manned component you have already sent robots to find water and process it into oxygen and hydrogen so when you arrive you already have the rocket fuel you need to return home in a hurry if you need to.

"On Monday, Igor Komarov, the director of Roscosmos — Russia's version of NASA — announced that the space agency will receive a total of $22.5 billion dollars in government funding over the next 10 years. That might sound like a lot, but it's close to how much NASA gets from the federal government each year. In 2015, alone, NASA received approximately $18 billion, and is projected to get a similar amount each year through 2019. Moreover, the latest Roscosmos budget is half the amount that the decade-long planning document called the Federal Space Program (FSP) 2016-2025 laid out earlier this year.

Komarov explained why in a statement:

“Based on today's economic situation, the funding for activities in the FSP is set at [1.521 trillion] rubles ($22.5 billion),” Komarov said, according to the The Moscow Times. “We have optimized the program, maintaining key projects … which will allow the industry to develop.” Right now, it's unclear how this drastic cut will impact Russia's goal to land their first cosmonauts on the moon — an ambitious effort that they announced earlier this year. Latest budget cut is the third Roscosmos has suffered this year."

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/russian-space-agency-gets-major-budget-cut-for-the-next-decade-2015-12

as usual space research gets cuts , and least funds in times of crysis... too bad

As usual, business insider is garbage.

It was discussed earlier which projects were cut.  As we all know, with Angara, costs will be reduced significantly over the years.

As much as it sucks, they also are aiming at projects that will guarantee profits, so they figure they can obtain an additional 1T rubles in revenue.

Also, never bother with dollar amount as rub lost half its value. If you used old conversion rating, it would mean $44B instead amd so that paints a different picture.

Lastly, their comparrision with NASA budget is a pathetic attempt of comparrison.  It is about costs of projects, cost of specialists and other such goods.  New space center is a good example.

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-04/12/russian-space-budget

So proposed as claimed in business insider is roughly almost $200B rubles less than in this article, but gives a better insight although older article.  This posted earlier: http://www.ato.ru/content/russia-saving-space-research gives other details.

The article is sure and we all are that Angara super heavy rocket was scrapped and instead, Angara A5 will be modified.  As well, they tried to claim that the nuclear engines were possibly dropped or reduced budget but that was a lie as I posted about its latest news recently on this thread.

It is vague what all the changes are, but a lot of money will be saved after Angara is complete and the vostochny space center as well.  Money saved wont mean it will go to Roscosmos though at the end.

The other thing that changed was Roscosmos is an actual entity now, owning its own production facilities and various factories.  In doing so, it greatly reduces overall costs for the company to produce a lot of the goods for its needs, as well means additional revenue from any foreign sales.

Export Revenue to Help Russian Space Industry Cut Expenditures - Roscosmos

Have anyone feel after reading Anatoly Zak spacewebsite that you will like to punch the guy
for his extreme Russophobia and bias on his articles?
The guy does not miss any opportunity to complain about Putin ,
Russia and he did the impossible and turned the last soyuz docking in the ISS into a near
complete total disaster.

Oh my god ,the automatic docking didn't worked and it took a second try and 9 minutes later
for the Russian pilot to do it right..  


Soyuz crew in close-call docking with ISS
http://www.russianspaceweb.com/iss-soyuz-tma19m.html#probe


Words like total failure , CAtastrophic he repeats again and again describing the whole
Soyuz docking into the ISS.  as if it was a miracle the astronauts and cosmonauts did not died.  

You only need to look at the bastard which magazine he writes.. BBC ,Popular Mechanics ,
all Russophobic media you can name are his clients ,what pays his salary. He is not a scientist
but only a Propaganda parrot and even though his website have lots of interesting information
is always completely ruined by his stupid Rusophobic Bias.. He is a stupid Russian liberal that live in America and hope someone punch the bastard in the face. His articles always have a very
strong sense of criticism to Russia space program and its foreign policy and its government lack of freedom..and likes to compare a lot Russia with soviet union.  This is very classic of Western trolls ,they cannot talk about Russia without mentioning KGB ,Soviet Union and communism and long bread lines.

On his view the whole Soyuz last mission was near catastrophic and he made it looks ,
that it was a miracle the pilots inside Soyuz did not died or that crashed the ISS putting at risk the entire international space station and the lives of all its crew.

Under new space program Russia will send five probes to Moon

The Moon program envisages development of five probes: Luna-Resurs-1 orbital apparatus, two Luna-Resurs-1 landing modules and Luna Glob and Luna-Grunt

Russia is developing a new generation Advanced Crew Transportation System. Its first flight to the Moon is planned for 2028. Infographics by TASS

MOSCOW, December 23. /TASS/. A new draft of the federal space program for 2016-2025 envisages creation of five Moon probes, the acting general director of the NPO Lavochkin research and industrial association, Sergey Lemeshevsky, has told TASS.

"The Moon program envisages development of five probes: Luna-Resurs-1 orbital apparatus, two Luna-Resurs-1 landing modules and Luna Glob and Luna-Grunt," he said.

According to earlier reports, Russia’s Moon program provides for the launch of four probes. Luna-25 (Luna Glob) is scheduled to be launched at the end of 2018 or early 2019, Luna-26 and Luna-27 in 2020 and 2021 (orbital and landing modules of Luna-Resurs-1). There were plans for launching a landing space probe Luna-28 (Luna-Grunt) after 2025. Its return module would deliver samples of Moon soil.

Russia plans 4 space observatories under new program

Four space observatories for fundamental research have been included in a new draft federal space program for 2016-2025, Sergei Lemeshevksy went on to say.

"The draft federal space program for 2016-2020 includes the following projects for fundamental space research: Spektr-RG, Spektr-UF, Spektr-M and Gamma-400 astrophysical observatories for the exploration of the Universe," he said.

The project also envisages the use of the Intergeliozond space probe to observe the internal heliosphere and survey the Sun at a close distance, as well as the Arka and Rezonans small spacecraft that will explore the solar corona and the solar transition region, correspondingly, in the ultraviolet band and study the interaction of waves in the Earth’s magnetosphere.

The draft of the new federal space program was presented in the spring of 2015. Financing was set at about 2 trillion roubles ($30 billion). Later it turned out that the program’s financing had been slashed to about 1.4 trillion. There may follow an increase in funding by 115 billion for projects to be approved after 2021.

The draft program has not been presented to the government yet. In the middle of December the head of the state-run corporation Roscosmos, Igor Komarov, declared the intention to present the draft to the Cabinet of Ministers by the end of the year. Later, a source in the space rocket industry told TASS that might happen after the New Year holidays as inter-departmental coordination revealed certain disagreements.

Vann7 wrote:Have anyone feel after reading Anatoly Zak spacewebsite that you will like to punch the guy
for his extreme Russophobia and bias on his articles?
The guy does not miss any opportunity to complain about Putin ,
Russia and he did the impossible and turned the last soyuz docking in the ISS into a near
complete total disaster.

Oh my god ,the automatic docking didn't worked and it took a second try and 9 minutes later
for the Russian pilot to do it right..  


Soyuz crew in close-call docking with ISS
http://www.russianspaceweb.com/iss-soyuz-tma19m.html#probe


Words like total failure , CAtastrophic he repeats again and again describing the whole
Soyuz docking into the ISS.  as if it was a miracle the astronauts and cosmonauts did not died.  

You only need to look at the bastard which magazine he writes.. BBC ,Popular Mechanics ,
all Russophobic media you can name are his clients ,what pays his salary. He is not a scientist
but only a Propaganda parrot and even though his website have lots of interesting information
is always completely ruined by his stupid Rusophobic Bias.. He is a stupid Russian liberal that live in America and hope someone punch the bastard in the face. His articles always have a very
strong sense of criticism to Russia space program and its foreign policy and its government lack of freedom..and likes to compare a lot Russia with soviet union.  This is very classic of Western trolls ,they cannot talk about Russia without mentioning KGB ,Soviet Union and communism and long bread lines.

On his view the whole Soyuz last mission was near catastrophic and he made it looks ,
that it was a miracle the pilots inside Soyuz did not died or that crashed the ISS putting at risk the entire international space station and the lives of all its crew.  

Agreed. Generally I like Zaks site, but he is a 5th-columnist worm... very disappointing and I have trouble understanding how anyone who identifies as Russian could possibly be so against his nations government during such trying times of geo-political aggression from foreign powers. It times like this the Russian people need to shelve petty grievances and suspend partisan agendas and get on with the job at defending the nation from its multiple enemies.

Last Proton-M launch today Successful , Out of the total 8 Proton-M launch in GTO orbit this year , 7 are successful and 1 failure

Express-AMU1 telecommunications satellite taken to designated orbit

http://tass.ru/en/science/846884