Cosmonautics 2023, March

The Japanese Space Agency reports the first successful launch in space of a new engine design using ring detonation waves

An Italian journalist and popularizer of science in his blog shared a sensation: he was contacted by the owner of unique magnetic tapes containing data records that Lunokhod-1 transmitted to Earth. Now Paolo Attivissimo is looking for specialists and amateurs who are ready to help in establishing the history of these priceless artifacts, as well as in decoding the information stored on them

Rosatom plans to conduct an experiment with space laser communication in 2024. The Progress spacecraft and the ISS will take part in it

Firefly Aerospace performed a static burn-through of the first stage of the promising Alpha launch vehicle. Its start may take place soon

Skoltech scientists and their colleagues from Russia, Germany and the United States conducted a study on monkeys, during which it was found that young macaques treated with the antidepressant Prozac for two years had lower brain lipid levels than controls. the drug was not received. Although none of the animals in the study group suffered from depression, the results obtained suggest which biochemical processes in the brain may be responsible for the appearance

According to a senior TASS source in the space industry, the hole in the skin of the Soyuz MS-09 was drilled in zero gravity. At the same time, the alleged culprit did not know the device's device

Russian-speaking critics of Elon Musk in particular and of the entire American cosmonautics in general often forget that SpaceX has serious competitors in the United States that have suffered greatly from the actions of this company. Under the pressure of the success of the eccentric billionaire's firm, they are forced to get out as best they can. In such an environment, the constant delays in the development of the Atlas V successor using Russian RD-180 engines - ULA's Vulcan Centaur missiles - look odd. So Tori Bruno decided to try

An internal review of the Artemis program revealed a number of serious delays in the development of its main components. Most likely, the planned American landing on the moon in 2024 will have to be postponed due to the unavailability of spacesuits. Special suits for extravehicular activities on the surface of a natural satellite of the Earth have been created since 2007 and they will cost the US budget a billion dollars, but still will not be ready on time

The project, formerly known as the Deep Space Gateway, is the most realistic alternative to the International Space Station. However, “alternative” is not quite the right word, because the new station, unlike the ISS, will be in the orbit of the Moon

Today the Soyuz-STA rocket with the Fregat upper stage launched the European space telescope CHEOPS from the Kourou cosmodrome in French Guiana. Although we are talking about a small telescope, whose task is not even to search for exoplanets, it is likely to discover many such objects. We figure out why this will happen and what will become his more important task

Mysterious Mars has always been shrouded in the mystery of unpredictable events. The path to it is not easy and can present any surprises. A long flight of millions of kilometers of void sometimes ends with not always understandable losses of vehicles. But strange phenomena sometimes occur at the very beginning of the path to the Red Planet. Sit closer and listen: we will tell you a curious story that happened recently

The past week was lit up with one of the most impressive achievements of mankind - the successful landing of a complex robot weighing more than a ton on the surface of another planet. Moreover, this process was first recorded on video by several cameras in high resolution. The video published by NASA turned out to be not only an entertaining spectacle, but also the most real scientific detective short film

Roskosmos has stunned the world with the news: Russia and China will create a scientific lunar station together. It is truly amazing, because neither of these two countries will be able to land a person on the Moon before the second half of the 2020s, what kind of station can we talk about there? More importantly, what could such a station do and does it make sense at all? Let's try to figure out all this, as well as why both Moscow and Beijing will have to abandon the project - previously, of course, having spent a lot of money on it

Orbital mechanics for a person unfamiliar with its intricacies looks not at all intuitive. Considering the speed of spacecraft movement, even their passage at a distance of a kilometer from each other is considered potentially dangerous. Now half of these events - 1,600 weekly - take place with the participation of Starlink satellites. And in the future, this number will reach truly astronomical proportions, which greatly worries specialized specialists

Russia decided to postpone the mission "Luna-25" to 2022, which should open a new chapter in the study of the natural satellite of our planet by "Roscosmos"

The Muhammad bin Rashid Space Center has announced the names of two astronauts from the United Arab Emirates who have been selected to participate in the SIRIUS-20/21 isolation experiment. It starts in November at the Ground Testing Complex of the Institute of Biomedical Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences

Blue Origin has filed a lawsuit in US federal court over an agreement previously issued to Elon Musk's company. According to him, it is the module from SpaceX that will deliver astronauts to the moon

Intuitive Machines has selected the Falcon 9 launch vehicle to launch its third mission, IM-3, to the moon. Prior to that, the carriers created by Ilona Mask were chosen for the IM-1 and IM-2 missions

According to the spokesman for the space agency Joel Montalbano, the launch of the next-generation spacecraft from Boeing should not be expected until mid-autumn. Earlier it became known about serious technical problems encountered by the device

Anatoly Petrukovich, Director of the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, shared the opinion of the scientific community on the value of the Science module for the ISS, its tasks and the future of an orbital laboratory with new structural elements. In a 40-minute interview, the eminent geophysicist also spoke about how he and his colleagues relate to the idea of filming in space and why few experiments were carried out on the basis of the Russian segment of the station, as well as on what principles decisions on their selection are made

According to a knowledgeable TASS source in the space industry, the reason for the transfer of tests of the new American spacecraft was problems with the engine valves. How long it will take to eliminate them is unknown

The "Prichal" junction module was delivered to the cosmodrome. In the fall, he should go to the International Space Station

NASA's newest rover was unable to collect samples of Martian soil the first time. Experts will have to determine the reason

SpaceX has installed 29 Raptor methane engines on the Super Heavy, the first stage of the Starship space system. Now it has been assembled and can soon be used for the first orbital test

Elon Musk's company has installed the Starship SN20 spacecraft on the Super Heavy Booster 4. The first orbital tests of the system can be expected soon

The development of reusable missiles is underway around the world, and China is no exception. Another aerospace startup from the Middle Kingdom recently conducted jump tests of a prototype of a light-class carrier. They were successful, and now the company is going to repeat within a year or two what only American SpaceX and Blue Origin have done so far: launch a rocket into space, and then vertically land it on Earth using the thrust of its own engines

The cosmic future is looming with a growing wave of launches. Launch pads become cramped for the space players' grand plans. In order not to get stuck on Earth in a narrow place, it is necessary to expand the passage into space - this is how the word "cosmodrome" is translated from the Greek. This, however, requires a fundamentally new way of thinking. How to open the gates to space - in our material

The successful launch of Crew Dragon will hit the Russian cosmonautics: it will lose hundreds of millions of dollars from the delivery of American astronauts. The United States may abandon the ISS, and then Roscosmos will have a difficult time. But there are more than just those affected: SpaceX's new ship could be a crucial element in … reaching the moon. And this despite the fact that the Crew Dragon seems to be unsuitable for flying to it. Let's try to figure out why

SpaceX expects to have a colony of a million people on Mars by 2050. It sounds absurd: there are only 30 years left, and there are still many years before the first flight to Mars. Some scholars, including Russian scientists, regard Musk's plans as "fantasy" and "propaganda." Nevertheless, the construction of a millionth colony on the Red Planet itself is quite real. Let's figure out why and why it is so difficult to believe in the rest of the world

April 12 marks the 60th anniversary of the first manned flight into space. In 1961, the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin took off in a spaceship from the Baikonur cosmodrome and made the world's first orbital flight around the Earth. The flight in near-earth space lasted one hour and 48 minutes, after which Gagarin successfully landed

In the late 1980s, Soviet cosmonauts accomplished a feat: they saved Salyut-7, one of the most notable orbital stations of the last century, from falling. We want to tell you about the place in the history of astronautics that the station has occupied. And a little about why it was worth saving her

The United States and its allies are firmly committed to landing on the moon in the 2020s. This should be only the first stage: then the creation of a permanent base and the "colonization" of the natural satellite of our planet will follow

Forty years ago, in April 1981, the Shuttles began their flights into space, and ten years ago they stopped. Usually they write about them: they completed the tasks, they just turned out to be too expensive. We will show the opposite: the original goal of these reusable ships was cheapness, so from the very beginning the project was a disaster. The trouble is this: the general idea behind the Shuttles is similar to that behind the fundamentally new means of space flight - Starship. Will Elon Musk's brainchild repeat an unenviable fate to

As was often the case in past years, what seemed like science fiction quite recently has become a part of everyday life. We are talking about reusable rockets that have managed to loudly declare themselves in the world. Will Russia be able to respond to SpaceX or Blue Origin?

Physicists from Tomsk State University Rashid Valiev and Gleb Baryshnikov were the first to develop a model that can be used to calculate the efficiency of energy and charge transfer in nanomaterials from first principles. It allows you to calculate how this transfer will be carried out before the synthesis of materials - this will allow you to save on experiments and quickly develop an effective nanodevice

Scientists from the Center for Research on Molecular Mechanisms of Aging and Age-related Diseases of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, together with colleagues from Germany and the United States, for the first time obtained and studied the structure of a light-activated proton pump from mushrooms. It has been compared to known protein structures with the same function. It turned out that the protein has a common ancestor with the proton pump of microbes without membranes inside. However, it differs from the proteins of bacteria, the cells of which have membranes but no nucleus. The results obtained are important for yes

Researchers from the Higher School of Economics Fyodor Uspensky and Anna Litvina studied the testimonies of the diplomat of the Holy Roman Empire Georg Tektander, collected in the book "Travel to Persia through Muscovy: 1602 - 1603", and found there an exact indication of the birthday of Tsar Boris Godunov - August 2 according to the old or August 12, new style. Until now, the date of birth of the king was indicated only approximately - 1552

Scientists from the Pavlov Institute of Physiology have identified a link between being left-handed or right-handed and brain signals, as well as how this can help develop neurointerface technology used after strokes

Researchers from the Center for Language and Brain at the Higher School of Economics, together with their Russian and American colleagues, for the first time compared the generation and understanding of speech at different linguistic levels in the same group of children with autism. This allowed them to disprove the hypothesis that children with autism understand speech worse than they speak

Today, 3D printing is increasingly used in the production of large-sized parts for industry. Experts predict that the global market for these technologies will amount to $ 350 billion by 2035. Despite the advantages, there are no technologies today that would accurately calculate the required parameters for printing products. Scientists from the Perm Polytechnic and the Autonomous University of Coahuila (Mexico) are the first to create a methodology that will automate the process of "growing" parts for aircraft, rockets