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Russian Foton M2 Set For Launch
Kiruna, Sweden (SPX) May 30, 2005 A data communication system, developed by the Swedish Space Corporation on behalf of ESA, will soon fly onboard the Russian Foton M2 spacecraft. Foton M2 is scheduled for launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome at 12.00 UTC on May 31 (today). This is the third time SSC delivers a data communication system to a Foton spacecraft. The first flight was onboard Foton 12 in 1999 and the second flight should have been onboard Foton M2 in 2002. Unfortunately the Russian Soyuz launcher exploded some 20 seconds after lift-off and the Foton spacecraft was completely destroyed. The communication system, called Telescience Support Unit, will support five of the 39 experiment modules onboard. The system will provide the users with data and video images from their experiments during the mission and gives the users the possibility to re-configure their experiments if needed.
The system will be operated from SSC�s ground station at Esrange, Kiruna, Sweden. The SSC ground station will have four to five contacts with the spacecraft per day, each lasting for about five minutes. Around 30 scientists and engineers will sit at the payload operation center at Esrange during the mission. Initially, the operation center will be manned with six engineers from SSC�s engineering center in Solna and four from SSC�s ground station at Esrange. The first contact with the spacecraft is expected at 15.06 UTC on May 31, approximately three hours after lift-off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. The Russian Foton spacecraft is developed for conducting experiments in microgravity. It has been developed and built by TsSKB-Progress, Samara, Russia. The first Foton mission was carried out in 1985 but the design derives from the sixties and the manned spacecraft Vostok in which Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space. The Foton spacecraft consists of three modules: the retrievable capsule, a battery pack and a service module. The capsule is a pressurised 2.2 m-diameter sphere housing the scientific payload and is the only part of the spacecraft to return from orbit at the end of the two-week mission. Foton M2 will be launched from the russian rocket base Baikonur onboard a Soyuz-U launch vehicle into an elliptical, low-earth orbit (200 - 350 km). When the mission is completed, a command from the ground control will be sent to the spacecraft to start deorbiting. The landing will take place within a desert area of a Russian territory, close to the Kazakhstan border. Related Links SpaceDaily Search SpaceDaily Subscribe To SpaceDaily Express
Russia To Launch Cosmos 1 Spacecraft, Parachute
Moscow (UPI) May 30, 2005Russia has dispatched a solar-sail spacecraft and a space parachute to waters off its northern coast to be launched from a submarine in the Barents Sea. |
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