After the decision to resume the program for the exploration of the moon, the Russian authorities decided on the beginning of its active phase. According to the head of Roscosmos Oleg Ostapenko, the full-scale development of a natural satellite of the Earth "will begin in the late 1920s and early 1930s." In general, for space exploration, according to Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, the government intends to allocate 321 billion rubles until 2025.
According to RIA Novosti, part of the amount announced by Rogozin will go to the creation of new ISS modules, as well as to the development of the automatic spacecraft OKA-T, which is now at the station and is designed to conduct experiments in high vacuum. "A lot of things have been planned," Rogozin said.
In the formalized form, as Ostapenko explained, the draft of the new Federal Space Program for 2016-2025 will be approved by the government "in the near future." According to the head of the space department, the program was almost completely approved.
“This program, its formation is almost complete, we are completing the stage of approval and in the near future it will be submitted for approval,” said Ostapenko, quoted by RIA Novosti, at a meeting at the Cosmonaut Training Center.
The new program involves, in particular, the creation of a super-heavy-class launch vehicle, active exploration of the Moon, the development of a robot-astronaut that will help the crew of the International Space Station (ISS) during spacewalks.
For comparison, the United States, in accordance with its space program in the 2030s, expects to carry out a human journey to Mars. Recently, American specialists have tested in the Earth's atmosphere a new technology for landing a "flying saucer" on the Red Planet - the Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator. At the same time, the American Mars rover Curiosity has been operating on Mars for more than a year.
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As for the ISS, at a meeting on the development of cosmonautics Rogozin raised the question of how expedient it is for the country to develop manned cosmonautics in the international aspect. The Deputy Prime Minister drew attention to the fact that in the current geopolitical situation, given the development of the economies of the world's leading countries, Russia must be as pragmatic as possible.
“We have to define for ourselves what we do next. I would like to hear your opinion on whether it makes sense for us to continue working in the framework of manned astronautics in the international aspect, or it is time for us to develop a purely national project, RIA Novosti quotes Rogozin.
Earlier, the Deputy Prime Minister said that after 2020 Russia can direct its funds to more promising space projects than the International Space Station. And in response, the head of NASA, Charles Bolden, expressed the opinion that the friction between the United States and Russia over the crisis in Ukraine still will not lead to the end of the work of the international station.
Among the Russian space projects presented in the summer, there are interesting, expensive, dubious and quite realizable.
It is unlikely that all these projects will be completed in full in the future, but if this happens, there will be another revolution in space exploration.
1. Liquidator: space wiper
People have not yet mastered space, but have already managed to pollute it. According to the Space Surveillance Network, about 16,200 objects revolve around the Earth, each of which could pose a threat to new spacecraft.
There is a certain chance that the plot of the movie "Gravity", in which two astronauts are cut off from the Earth as a result of the destruction of their spacecraft by debris, could come true. In August, Roskosmos announced plans to develop a spacecraft to clean geostationary orbit from spent satellites and upper stages of space rockets. The project called "Liquidator" should be developed in the period 2018-2025 with a budget of about 10.8 billion rubles (about $ 300 million).
2. New spaceports
Roskosmos plans to spend 900 billion rubles ($ 24.3 billion) on infrastructure to support spaceports. These funds will be used to expand the Plesetsk cosmodrome, as well as to complete the construction of the Vostochny cosmodrome and support the Baikonur space complex in Kazakhstan.
3. Remote sensing of the earth
Remote sensing of the earth is one of the weakest points of the Russian space industry. Lacking a national space program, Russian scientists are forced to rely on information from international satellites.
The federal space program, which is to be developed in 2016-2025, promises to increase the presence of orbiting satellites in space by launching 26 high-tech vehicles worth 358 billion rubles ($ 9.7 billion).
Among the projects included in the program: Meteo-SSO, a global hydrometeorological and heliophysical system of four new generation satellites; Meteo-Glob, a global meteorological sensing system using visible and infrared frequencies; Resource, a program of three satellites that will capture the Earth in high and ultra-high resolution; "EC-MTR", a space surveillance system in case of emergencies, consisting of 10 satellites in orbit synchronous with the Sun; ES-GSO, a similar emergency response system operating in optical and radar bands in geostationary orbit.
4. Base on the Moon
The Russian spacecraft was the first to fly around the dark side of the moon and take soil samples, but we did not land people on the satellite's surface.
Currently, Roskosmos is seriously concerned with the problems of lunar exploration. The agency plans to spend $ 280 million to develop the lunar base, deliver a mobile arm, grader, excavator, cable cover and mobile robot to the lunar surface in 2018-2025. It looks like Roscosmos wants to seriously establish itself on the Moon.
5. Lunokhod
A lunar base without a lunar rover is a waste of money, so Roscosmos is developing a new rover that will search for natural resources. The moon is full of resources like rare earth elements, titanium, uranium, which are scarce on Earth. It is also rich in helium-3, a possible fuel for nuclear fusion. The new lunar transport will be called the Lunamobil, and its development should be completed by 2021, followed by tests over four years.
6. Super-heavy rocket for Mars
In September 2014, plans to develop a super-heavy rocket with a payload capacity of 120-150 tons received preliminary approval from President Vladimir Putin. This rocket is one of the most expensive ideas of Roskosmos, and its budget is twice as much as the Angara rocket in use at the moment. The purpose of the future rocket is a flight to Mars. NASA is developing a similar apparatus for this purpose.
7. "Spectr-RG" for the study of black holes
In 2013, the Russian-German High Energy Observatory Spektr-RG was ready to launch to study galactic clusters and black holes with the eROSITA telescope. Although the idea has been in development since the 1980s, the project only got relaunched in 2005 with a budget of $ 135 million. It was suspended several times due to delays associated with the German telescope development. The observatory should be ready by 2017.
Based on materials from hi-news.ru