Russian Space Program: News & Discussion #3

Bad news

Some perps broke into Energia plant and stole a bunch of circuit boards. They were caught on CCTV and investigation is ongoing. No known amount in terms of Rubles in theft.

Roscosmos, Moscow government start work on National Space Center project

The architectural concept of the building is yet to be chosen by a special commission on a competitive basis

MOSCOW, June 6. /TASS/. Russia’s space corporation Roscosmos and the government of Moscow have started the work to create a National Space Center in the Russian capital and are now drafting the required documents, a Roscosmos spokesperson told TASS on Thursday.

"At present, relevant structural bodies of the Roscosmos state corporation and the Government of Moscow are drafting governing and reference documents, which, in line with the current legislation, are necessary for implementing the project," the source said.

A special working group was set up to implement the project.

The architectural concept of the building is yet to be chosen by a special commission on a competitive basis.

Russian President Vladimir Putin in his annual message to the Federal Assembly on February 27 issued instructions to create a National Space Center within Moscow city limits. The new entity is to get down to work in January 2020. Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, Roscosmos Chief Dmitry Rogozin and Moscow’s Mayor Sergei Sobyanin are the officials responsible. They are expected to present the final report by January 15, 2020.

The aerospace cluster, to be created on the basis of the Khrunichev Center in Moscow’s Fili neighborhood, will incorporate the head offices of the main organizations of the space rocket industry, design bureaus and structural units of research and educational establishments. According to the Roscosmos press service, the space industry compound will have a team of 20,000 designers and engineers.

More:
http://tass.com/science/1061950

PhSt wrote:

miketheterrible wrote:Bad news

Some perps broke into Energia plant and stole a bunch of circuit boards. They were caught on CCTV and investigation is ongoing. No known amount in terms of Rubles in theft.  

I bet these ‘perps’ receive special commission from NATO, sometimes hiring thugs work better than risking their own agents to do the dirty work, Russia should mirror these dirty actions and sabotage American and European space production facilities whenever they get the opportunity.

I agree. This is not some random theft since the boards have no value other than for their intended use. This is clearly a sabotage
operation. NATO needs specs that it can disrupt via EM warfare methods or even via direct methods by knowing the information flow in
the rocket and disrupting key connections.

Energia needs to redesign these circuit boards to rob these f*cks of their loot.

miketheterrible wrote:Bad news

Some perps broke into Energia plant and stole a bunch of circuit boards. They were caught on CCTV and investigation is ongoing. No known amount in terms of Rubles in theft.

So in addition to not being competent/intelligent enough to hire PR staff (and thus giving Zak free reign) they are also incapable of hiring security guards?

Classic Roskosmos

I believe a huge portion of the equipment stolen (boards) actually came from Switzerland. So they don't redesign anything. They are very specific boards but I imagine there is a value to them.

Regardless, I do agree with Papa on this one. Where is security? You would think a high profile company would have security guards.

miketheterrible wrote:I believe a huge portion of the equipment stolen (boards) actually came from Switzerland.  So they don't redesign anything. They are very specific boards but I imagine there is a value to them.

Regardless, I do agree with Papa on this one. Where is security?  You would think a high profile company would have security guards.

I am sure they have them. But security guards can be bought and faced with death will just run away. They aren't kamikaze level of loyalty.

Launch of Spektr-RG space observatory delayed to backup date

Spektr-RG is a joint Russian-German project

BAIKONUR /Kazakhstan/, June 21. /TASS/. The launch of the Proton-M carrier rocket equipped with the DM-03 upper stage, which is planned to deliver the Spektr-RG space observatory to orbit, has been delayed to a backup date, Russia’s Roscosmos State Space Corporation said in a statement on Friday.

"During preparations for the launch of the Proton-M carrier rocket equipped with the DM-03 upper stage, a minor flaw was detected. The State Commission has decided to delay the launch to a backup date," the statement reads.

Deputy CEO and Chief Designer at Russia’s NPO Lavochkin aerospace company Alexander Shirshakov said earlier that July 12 had been set as a backup date. A Russian space industry source, in turn, told TASS earlier that the launch was scheduled for June 21 or 22, while July 12 and 13 were viewed as backup dates.

Spektr-RG is a joint Russian-German project with a goal "to map all massive structures in the observable Universe in X-rays," making "an all-sky survey… with unprecedented spectral and angular resolution," Roscosmos said.

https://tass.com/science/1065047

Roscosmos to create new design bureau tasked with reusable rocket project

The rocket will be based on the preliminary design of the Krylo-SV (Wing) recoverable rocket stage project

MOSCOW, July 3. /TASS/. A new experimental design bureau will be created at the Central Research Institute of Machine-Building (TsNIImash), the main scientific and research institution of Russia’s space corporation Roscosmos, a source in the rocket and space industry told TASS on Wednesday.

"According to the Roscosmos head’s decree, an experimental design bureau named after [Italian-born Soviet aircraft designer Robert] Bartini is being created. Its first task will be to design light-class reusable rockets," the source said.

He added that the project would be based on the preliminary design of the Krylo-SV (Wing) project to create a recoverable rocket stage, earlier prepared by the Prospective Research Fund (FPI).

The bureau will employ young Roscosmos specialists and engineers who resigned from the Ilyushin Aviation Complex.

On Tuesday, a defense industry source told TASS that about 80 employees resigned from Ilyushin. A company spokesperson later told TASS that a group of managers and administrative sector employees were leaving their posts due to ongoing optimization of the management system.

Satellite Meteor-M placed into orbit

The separation of the small satellites is to take place after the deployment of the major payload, according to Roscosmos

VOSTOCHNY COSMODROME /Amur Region/, July 5. /TASS/. Weather satellite Meteor-M No.2-2 has separated from the upper stage Fregat and went into orbit.

"The Meteor-M satellite has been put into orbit at an altitude of 830 km. The separation of the small satellites is to take place after the deployment of the major payload," a Roscosmos official said.

The upper stage Fregat continued the deployment of the secondary payload - 32 small space vehicles.

Meteor-M No.2-2 is a weather satellite designed by VNIIEM Corporation. It will become part of the space system of hydrometeorological and oceanographic support Meteor-3M and the space system based on it. The first vehicle in the series, Meteor-M No.1, was launched on September 17, 2009. The second vehicle, Meteor-M No.2, was launched in 2014. Meteor-M No.2-1 was lost following the launch failure in 2017.

https://tass.com/science/1067207

Russian booster rocket delivers 32 mini-satellites into orbit

The Fregat booster formed three various orbits for the satellites’ most accurate and convenient delivery, depending on their missions

VOSTOCHNY COSMODROME /Amur Region/, July 5. /TASS/. Thirty-two small satellites have detached from the Fregat upper stage and entered their target orbits, the press office of Russia’s State Space Corporation Roscosmos reported on Friday.

The Fregat booster formed three various orbits for the satellites’ most accurate and convenient delivery, depending on their missions, the press office said.

"The first is the sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 828 km and an inclination of 98.57 degrees, the second is with an altitude of 580 km and an inclination of 97.7 degrees. Some other part of the satellites was delivered into the orbit at an altitude of 530 km and an inclination of 97.5 degrees. All the satellites separated from the booster in the normal mode and their further control will be exercised by the companies that acted as the customers of the launch," the Roscosmos press office said.

The mini-satellites were delivered into their orbits as the hosted payload of the Meteor-M No. 2-2 weather satellite. Three of them are Russian CubeSat-format Socrat, VDNH-80 and AmurSat research and educational satellites. The other satellites belong to customers from Finland, the UK, France, Germany, the US, Israel, Sweden, Thailand, Ecuador, the Czech Republic and Estonia.

The Soyuz-2.1b carrier rocket with the Meteor-M No. 2-2 weather satellite and 32 mini-satellites as the hosted payload was launched at 8:41 a.m. Moscow time on July 5. This was the rocket’s first launch from the Vostochny spaceport this year and the fifth in the history of the new Russian cosmodrome.

https://tass.com/science/1067271

On June 7th, within the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum the Governor of the Moscow region, Andrey Vorobiev, and Director General of Gazprom Space Systems, Dmitry Sevastiyanov, signed the Cooperation Agreement on building a spacecraft assembly and integration facility in Shchelkovo district.
Dmitry Sevastiyanov commented the event as follows:
"With the support of Gazprom our company implements the investment project on construction of spacecraft assembly and integration facility representing a sophisticated technological and environmentally friendly plant providing full stroke of assembly and tests of space equipment within one compact building.
Localization of up-to-date European space technologies in the Moscow area, reduction of terms and costs of spacecraft development, creation of the gravity center for innovation companies and youth research teams – there is just a part of tasks which we will solve, having constructed such facility.
This plant will produce satellites for the development of our operator business, as well as spacecraft for projects within the existing Federal Space Program and for the Federal Target Program “Sphere”.

This is really interesting as that suburb Shchelkovo is next to the suburb Korolyov which is where Energia is located (and named after the famous Russian space engineer Korolyov)
and the original Gazprom satellites were built by Energia
Alexei Miller the head of Gazprom is a real patriot - he always talks about using only Russian stuff wherever possible
so he's decided to build his own satellites - which is looking like it is going to be an outsourcing of Energia's satellite stuff - so they can concentrate on manned missions.
This is a big deal as the big weakness in the Russian space program is satellites as Reshetnev is snowed under with military satellites and Glonass etc
and Gazprom has very deep pockets …. so Miller is doing something about it

how did Gazprom get into satellites ? apparently in the 1990s when the govt was broke …. the Russians had to occupy 4 key allocated satellite positions by a certain date or lose them ….. so Gazprom who had money ….. took them up ….. for Mother Russia ….

The CEO of Gazprom Alexey Miller said he was proud to be included in the new US sanctions and believes that this confirm the correctness of his actions.

“Unless I came across the first list, there were some doubts – maybe something was wrong (with me), but no, they finally turned me in! So we do everything right”, said Alexey Miller.


… I like his style …. lol

Russian specialists have replaced a chemical source of the electric current in the Spektr-RG space telescope and the launch will take place on July 12, Head of Russia’s State Space Corporation Roscosmos Dmitry Rogozin said on Friday.

https://tass.com/science/1067280

Big_Gazza wrote:

George1 wrote:a chemical source of the electric current

Most people would call it a battery... but not TASS writers  

That IS funny

Big_Gazza wrote:

George1 wrote:a chemical source of the electric current

Most people would call it a battery... but not TASS writers  

Actually they are correct in their terminology. In space there are three types of battery: solar cells, chemical storage and nuclear.
So they referred explicitly to the chemical storage type.

Spektr-RG observatory separates from Blok DM-03 stage in deployment orbit - Roscosmos

The Russian space agency pointed out that "the collimation, calibration and tests of telescopes along with test observations will be performed" in the next three months



MOSCOW, July 13. /TASS/. The Spektr-RG space observatory has separated from Blok DM-03 stage, the Russian space agency Roscosmos said on its Twitter page on Saturday.






"The Spektr-RG orbit observatory has successfully separated from the Blok DM-03 upper stage in the deployment orbit," the state corporation said in a statement.

Roscosmos pointed out that "the collimation, calibration and tests of telescopes along with test observations will be performed" in the next three months during Spektr RG’s flight to a point in space called a Lagrange point (L2). It is the point where the gravitational forces of the Sun and the Earth balance each other out, thus keeping the astronomy satellite in a stable orbit at the same position relative to the Earth.

Proton-M rocket launched from Pad 81 of the Baikonur Cosmodrome at approximately 15.31 Moscow Time (12.31 UTC). The launch of the Spektr-RG space observatory had been initially scheduled for June 21 but it was canceled on its liftoff day. Roscosmos Deputy CEO for Space Systems Mikhail Khailov explained this decision by the problems that had emerged during a check of a non-reusable chemical power source on the space telescope.

On Thursday, Roscosmos told TASS that additional tests had been done prior to the launch. On Friday, the state commission decided to postpone the launch until July 13.

About Spektr-RG

Spektr-RG is a joint Russian-German project intended to chart a detailed map of the sky in the X-ray band. The space observatory will be scanning the sky in a broad energy band with high sensitivity and angular resolution.

Academic of the Russian Academy of Sciences Rashid Syunyaev, the academic supervisor of the spacecraft, told reporters in late April that scientists would expect the spacecraft to detect about three million black holes and to study the X-ray emissions from 700,000 stars.

The Spektr-RG orbit observatory carries two payloads: Russian-made Astronomical Roentgen Telescope - X-ray Concentrator (ART-XC) and German-made Extended Roentgen Survey with an Imaging Telescope Array (eROSITA). The spacecraft will be supported on Earth by both Russian and German telescopes and observatories.

https://tass.com/science/1068444

Gazprom Space Systems takes over control of Yamal-601 satellite

Last month, the satellite was controlled jointly by the teams of Thales Alenia Space (the company where the device's manufactured) and Gazprom Space Systems from the Mission Control Center, Shchelkovo

MOSCOW, July 22. /TASS/. The control of the Yamal-601 satellite has been completely transferred to Gazprom Space Systems, a division of the Russian gas holding, the company said in a statement on its website on Monday.

"On July 19th, Thales Alenia Space completely transferred control of the Yamal-601 satellite to the operational divisions of Gazprom Space Systems," according to the statement.

Last month, the satellite was controlled jointly by the teams of Thales Alenia Space (the company where the device was manufactured) and Gazprom Space Systems from the Mission Control Center in Shchelkovo.

Several days ago, all the networks that operated in Yamal-202, the predecessor of Yamal-601, were successfully switched to the new satellite.

On May 30, the Proton-M carrier rocket was blasted off from the Baikonur Space Center in Kazakhstan to bring the Yamal-601 satellite to the orbit.

The Yamal-601 satellite in the C-band will form a fixed beam with a contour diagram and a semi-global service area that will cover the visible part of the territory of Russia, the CIS countries, Europe, the Middle East and part of Southeast Asia.

The Yamal-601 project is part of the Federal Targeted Program for the Development of Television and Radio Broadcasting in Russia. Thales Alenia Space won the contract for the design, production, testing and turn-key supply of the Yamal-601 spacecraft in 2013.

https://tass.com/science/1069864

State Duma ratifies Russia-China agreement on national satellite system station deployment

MOSCOW, July 23. /TASS/. The Russian State Duma (lower chamber) has ratified an agreement between the Russian and the Chinese governments on Tuesday on cooperation in applying the GLONASS and the BeiDou global national satellite navigation systems, envisioning a mutual deployment of stations on their territories.

The agreement was signed in Beijing on November 7, 2019. According to the explanatory material, the agreement stipulates deployment of measurement station for the GLONASS and the BeiDou systems on the territories of China and Russia respectively to develop functional additional features of GLONASS and to create a global system of control and confirm the radio navigation zone characteristics of this system.

https://tass.com/science/1069992

Russia’s android robot arrives at Baikonur spaceport for flight to orbital outpost

The robot is expected to stay a week and a half in orbit

MOSCOW, July 23. /TASS/. Russia’s Skybot F-850 android robot has arrived at the Baikonur spaceport for its travel to the International Space Station (ISS) in August, Head of the State Space Corporation Roscosmos Dmitry Rogozin tweeted on Tuesday.

"Half an hour ago, the Skybot F-850 avatar robot arrived at Baikonur," the Roscosmos chief wrote on his Tweeter.

The android robot will join the Russian crew of the International Space Station on August 22 to continue the tests of "the space-designated anthropomorphous system," Rogozin specified.

The Skybot F-850 android robot (previously called Fedor) has been developed by Android Technology Company and the Advanced Research Fund on a technical assignment from Russia’s Emergencies Ministry. The ‘Rescuer’ robot demonstration prototype was made in 2016. Initially, the robot was dubbed the Avatar but later got its own name FEDOR (Final Experimental Demonstration Object Research). In 2018, the FEDOR’s exhibition model for the All-Russian Exhibition Center (VDNKh) in Moscow was created.

The robot is expected to stay a week and a half in orbit, after which it will return to Earth. In the future, the Skybot F-850 will travel to the Moon. Such flights will be performed before manned missions to the Earth’s natural satellite.

https://tass.com/science/1069935

PapaDragon wrote:

miketheterrible wrote:Bad news

Some perps broke into Energia plant and stole a bunch of circuit boards. They were caught on CCTV and investigation is ongoing. No known amount in terms of Rubles in theft.  

So in addition to not being competent/intelligent enough to hire PR staff (and thus giving Zak free reign) they are also incapable of hiring security guards?

Classic Roskosmos

Didnt i told before ,that Russia have the worse quality controls and security in the world ,
among the developed countries? Only in third world nations ,civilians can enter in
space center facilities and steal things like nothing.. it shows the level of incompetence
of Putin ,who is personally supervising the Space agency .. Fire Putin and replace him with
Trampolin man and you will see a gigantic massive improvement on Russia space program.
Putin is truly the epitome of incompetence.. First the sabotage of SOyuz.. now sabotage
on Energia facilities.. someone need to kick Putin from the kremling before the moron ,
continues Russia adversaries to destroy Russia.. In Russia even drones are allowed to freely flight almost every place.. so will not be surprised CIA terrorist ,armed with explosives and drones to target Russia most important scientist for Space and military development..

Big_Gazza wrote:That 1st pic is Spektr-R, not RG.  Here's a better one, courtesy of fuktard Zak.

Remember my warnings..

MR ZAK ,shows all the classic signals to be a disinformation Snowden like , agent of the
CIA , but focused in Space news..  When Russia ever land on Moon or mars.. that moron
popularity will be the center of promoting doubts of the success of Any important Russian
space program..  

he already used his disinformation propagand ,when Russia cooperated with Europe..
for mars mission.. he claimed Russian rocket "exploded"..and failed.. and obviously he had no way to know that from any source if Russia and Europe don't report about it.. neither NASA.
Europe actually told that all was going according to the plan ,when the rocket modules were flying towards mars..

So is likely he is a Tin Tank , disinformation agent on the important things..
and his main role will be to discredit any important success of Russia space program
to try to minimize as much as possible the success of Russia in space.. and don't be
surprised if he one day claim ,Russia faked a moon landing or Mars landing..  
Popular people in media usually are recruited to damage the image of the adversaries of the West..

This doesn't mean that 100% of what ZAK says is a lie..  Disinformation agents.. the best ones ,are those ,that most of the things they say are true.. but lie in the big things.
So he will get exclusive photos ,faster than anyone with help of their NASA and ESA contacts ..but be careful with his stabbing , he will create major disinformation propaganda on the important things.. like deep space exploration missions or create negativity around Russian satellites purposes. His goal seems to be ,to try to deny any Victory for Russia in
any space exploration race.. and help his American friends.. Is not surprise he live in America.. and talks about Russia as a repressive communist state.