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Напомню, ракета стартовала с площадки 1С космодрома Восточный. Через десять минут после запуска разгонный блок «Фрегат» отделил космический корабль от третьей ступени ракеты.
Запуск прошел в обычном режиме, отказов оборудования не зафиксировано.
On November 5 at 18.02.40 Moscow time, the Soyuz-2.1b launch vehicle with the Fregat upper stage was launched from the Vostochny Cosmodrome. Two Ionosfera-M satellites and 53 Russian and foreign small spacecraft entered orbit. The accompanying payload also includes the first Russian-Chinese university satellite Druzhba Atürk.
The creation of the new Ionosfera-M satellite is the most important stage of the project to create the Ionozond system, the first Russian space system for monitoring the heliogeographic situation. Or, more simply, "space weather" around the Earth. These include four Ionosfera-M spacecraft. This spacecraft monitors the state of the Earth's ionosphere. The formation of the orbital group is planned with the help of two launches (the first Ionosfera-M No. 1 and No. 2, the second Ionosfera-M No. 3 and No. 4).
The mass of one satellite is 430 kg. The active lifespan is 5 years, the average altitude of the active orbit is 820 km.
As reported by Roscosmos, the Ionozond space system was developed by VNIIEM by order of the state enterprise in the interests of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Roshydromet. It is designed to solve scientific and applied problems of obtaining basic knowledge about the Earth's ionosphere and to have the ability to continuously monitor near-Earth space.
There will be four spacecraft, two in each orbital plane. What is the ionosphere anyway? Scientists explain: It is a region of the Earth's atmosphere at an altitude of 50 km to 2000 km. In addition to neutral atoms and molecules, they also contain charged particles (ions and electrons formed under the influence of solar radiation). This allows the ionosphere to conduct electric currents and reflect or distort radio signals. Electric currents generated in the Earth's magnetosphere also pass through the ionosphere. Therefore, it is a major factor influencing geomagnetic activity, such as the formation of magnetic storms and the appearance of the polar lights.
Ionospheric research using satellite ionosondes was conducted in our country using special spacecraft and the Mir orbital station until the 1990s. And since then, this has really stopped. Thus, the Ionosonde project will resume this important work.
What do experts expect? Information obtained from Ionosphere-M should be used in conjunction with ground-based observations. Scientists also plan to conduct ground-space experiments to study the reaction of the Earth's ionosphere to the influence of the lower layers of the atmosphere in the form of hurricanes, volcanic eruptions and other natural phenomena.
Experts emphasize that the data from the Ionosfera-M satellite will have not only scientific but also applied significance. Why? Microelectronics, communication and navigation systems, power transmission networks, pipelines and other modern systems that are widely implemented today are vulnerable to solar and geomagnetic activity, which leads to accidents and reduced productivity of electronic systems. Therefore, the relevance of operational monitoring and orbital forecasting of "space weather" is increasing every day.
The developer of the satellite targeting system is the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in cooperation. So what kind of "super-stuffing" did the scientists create for their satellites?
LAERT is an ionosonde for measuring the vertical distribution of electron concentration in ionospheric plasma. This device has two main operating modes: In passive mode, it operates as a wireless spectrometer in the frequency range of 100 kHz - 20 MHz. In active mode, it is equivalent to an ionospheric radar in the same frequency range. This device was developed and manufactured by VNIIEM.
PES is a receiver of GPS/GLONASS navigation satellite signals for determining the properties of the ionosphere using radio occultation methods. The device was manufactured at the N.V. Pushkov Institute of Geomagnetism, Ionosphere and Radio Wave Propagation of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IZMIRAN).
MAYAK is a transmitter of a coherent radio signal with frequencies of 150 MHz and 400 MHz. Based on signals received from the MAYAK device of the ground station, the distribution of electron density in the ionosphere is reconstructed using low-altitude tomography. This device is manufactured by IZMIRAN. The ground station for the use of the MAYAK device of Roshydromet is supervised by the Institute of Applied Geophysics named after Academician E.K. Fedorov (IPG). For research purposes, the work of the receiving station is carried out by IZMIRAN - the Physics Department of Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomonosov, the Institute of Polar Physics, the Institute of Solar-Terrestrial Physics of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences and other organizations.
NVK with magnetic and electric sensors - analyzer of electromagnetic wave receivers in the low-frequency range up to 20 kHz for measuring natural radiation of space plasma and artificial signals from power grids and ground-based low-frequency transmitters. The magnetic sensor is manufactured in the Radiophysics Laboratory of the Nizhny Novgorod State University named after N.I. Lobachevsky. The electric sensor is manufactured by the scientific and production enterprise Astron-Electronica. The NVK electronics are manufactured by IZMIRAN.
SPER/1 is a plasma and energy radiation spectrometer (ions and electrons in the range of 0.05 keV – 100 MeV) designed to monitor plasma entering the ionosphere “from above” the magnetosphere. The device was manufactured at the D.V. Skovelchin Institute of Nuclear Physics (NINP) of Moscow State University.
GALS/1 - Spectrometer of galactic cosmic rays and magnetospheric radiation (electrons and protons in the range from 0.15 to 600 MeV). This device is manufactured by IPG.
BKUSNI is a block that controls the operation of complex target equipment devices, collecting measurement results and transmitting them to the telemetry system for transmitting information flows to Earth. This device was manufactured by IKI RAS.
In addition, satellites No. 3 and No. 4 "Ionosfera-M" will be equipped with "Ozonometer-TM" devices for measuring ozone layer parameters. The device was manufactured by the Scientific and Production Enterprise "Astron Electronics" with the participation of the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Simultaneously with the observations of the Ionosfera-M satellite, measurements of plasma density by resonance-acoustic methods are planned on the small CubeSat SamSat-Ionosfera satellite. The idea of the experiment was proposed by an employee of the A.V. Gaponov-Grekhov Institute of Applied Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the device was manufactured by employees of the Samara National Research University named after Academician S.P. Korolev. The satellite will be launched together with Ionosfera-M-1 and Ionosfera-M-1 and Ionosfera-M-2 as a secondary load of 53 small devices.
The Druzhba ATURK spacecraft (ATURK — Association of Technical Universities of Russia and China) was developed as part of the implementation of the Russian-Chinese cooperation program in the space industry for 2023-2027. According to TASS, it was designed by students from Amur State University (AmSU) and Harbin Polytechnic University.
This is a small spacecraft of CubeSat standards. The satellite was equipped with a high-resolution camera produced by the Harbin Institute of Technology. From a distance of 500 km above the Earth, it can record a 2.5 m long section of the Earth's surface. Amur State University students developed the Foton-Amur module for the spacecraft. This makes it possible to study the influence of cosmic factors on the Earth's surface. Operation of a photoelectric converter.