Very soon, this Sunday, all progressive humanity will celebrate Cosmonautics Day - 54 years ago, Yuri Gagarin said the story went down in history “Let's go!”. In more than half a century, everything has changed in space technology except space itself. Therefore, on the eve of this holiday, we offer to look together, what interesting happened in the Russian cosmonautics over the past year?

PTK NP

This loud, sonorous name stands for "A new generation manned transport ship." It is part of the PPTS project, the Perspective Manned Transport System. Work on the project has been ongoing since 2006, in March 2015 a full-size model of the ship itself was built and all kinds of full-scale tests began. PTK NP is being developed to replace Unions”Designed in the 1960s. The new ship will be much more spacious, more comfortable, with modern equipment and the latest control system. The ship even has a separate toilet cubicle. Moreover, the PTK NP is being developed as a universal vehicle for delivering crews to near-Earth stations and other planets. The main goal is called the moon. The maximum capacity is six people when flying in near-Earth space, and four people can go to interplanetary flight.

















Unfortunately, the future of the project cannot be called cloudless - the development time is delayed, and the start of test flights has been delayed more than once. However, specialists of RSC Energia, where the ship is being developed, argue that work is going on as usual. However, funding for the Federal Space Program has been reduced due to the crisis. And the feasibility of the project is criticized, which inspires certain concerns.

Hangar

Last summer, our new Angara-1.2PP launch vehicle was first launched from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome. Typically, the launch and flight were successful, the payload fell in a given area at the Kura training ground. "Angara-1.2PP" is a light variety, its mass is only 171 tons.





And at the end of December 2014, the launch of the Angara-A5 heavy rocket, weighing 768 tons, took place. This time the payload was put into geostationary orbit. By the way, it is planned to create an ultra-heavy Angara-7 with a mass of up to 1,154 tons. But this carrier, most likely, will be created for flights to the moon and Mars.






^{From left to right: A7, A5, A3, A1.}

We have long needed a new launch vehicle to get rid of Baikonur’s addiction. But in order to be able to launch into orbit the same cargoes as the Protons are now launching from Kazakhstan, the rocket should have been noticeably more powerful. Such a carrier and became the "Angara-A5." In addition to this main task, the Angara line has a number of advantages:

1. Modular design. Today it is the only family of missiles in the world assembled from the same unified modules.
2. Production is concentrated entirely in Russia.
3. Much less toxic fuel (instead of heptyl and nitrogen tetroxide - kerosene and liquid oxygen).

Millimetron

And the third interesting news is related to the Millimetron orbital observatory project - prototyping and testing of individual components of the future installation has begun. The observatory will operate in the wavelength ranges from 20 microns to 17 mm.









The observatories have many destinations, we won’t give a list here, you can find it on Wikipedia. The diameter of the mirror will be 10 meters, and particularly high precision manufacturing and installation is required, taking into account the work of the millimeter and submillimeter ranges. In addition, the receiving mirror and equipment should be cooled to almost absolute zero (signal receiver - up to 0.1 K, optical system - up to 4.5 K) so that thermal noise does not clog the useful signal. To do this, the mirror will be supplemented with several layers of heat shields, and with the help of a special cryo screen and liquid helium active cooling will be provided.

By the way, a unique thermal vacuum chamber was built to test the elements of the future observatory - the existing chambers did not allow to provide the required degree of cooling. Using cryorefrigerators in a new chamber with a volume of 0.6 m3, a temperature of -268.5 ºС is reached. The launch of the observatory is yet scheduled for 2025, it will be located at the Lagrange point L2, as far as possible from the Sun.

The fact that we focused on these three news items does not mean that nothing has happened in our space program over the past year. On the contrary, astronaut crews are sent to the ISS and satellites regularly launched, and not only from Baikonur. Here, for example, the official statistics on the “usual” scientific-starting activity for the past year:

April 2014:

• Launch vehicle (LV) Proton-M, Baikonur, payload: communication satellites Luch-5V and KazSat-3 (Kazakhstan)
• Soyuz-U LV, Baikonur, payload: Progress M-23M cargo transport ship
• Soyuz-U LV, Baikonur, payload: EgyptSat-2 communications satellite (Egypt)

May 2014:

• Soyuz-2.1A launch vehicle, Plesetsk, payload: Cosmos-2495 observation satellite
• Rocket Rokot, Plesetsk, payload: communication satellites Cosmos-2496, 2497, 2498 and 2499
• LV Soyuz-FG, Baikonur, payload: manned spacecraft with crew for the ISS Soyuz TMA-13M
• LV Zenit-2S, Odyssey offshore platform, payload: communications satellite Eutelsat-3B (European Union)

June 2014:

• Soyuz-2.1B LV, Plesetsk, payload: Glonass-M communications satellites No. 55
• LV Dnepr, Yasny launch pad, payload: 33 satellites for various purposes

July 2014:

• Rokot, Plesetsk LV, payload: Gonets-M communication satellites (3 pcs.)
• Soyuz-2.1B LV, Baikonur, payload: Meteor-M observation satellite No. 2 and six small satellites for various purposes (MKA-FKI, SkySat-2, DX-1, TechDemoSat-1, UKube-1, AISSAT-2)
• Soyuz-2.1A launch vehicle, Baikonur, payload: scientific satellite Photon-M No. 4 (landed in the Orenburg region upon completion of work)
• Soyuz-U LV, Baikonur, payload: Progress M-24M cargo transport ship

September 2014:

• LV Soyuz-FG, Baikonur, payload: manned spacecraft with crew for the ISS Soyuz TMA-14M

October 2014:

• LV Proton-M, Baikonur, payload: satellite-relay Beam
• LV Proton-M, Baikonur, payload: Express-AM6 communications satellite
• Soyuz-2.1A launch vehicle, Baikonur, payload: Progress M-25M cargo transport ship
• Soyuz-2.1A launch vehicle, Plesetsk, payload: Meridian communications satellite

November 2014:

• LV Dnepr, Yasny launch pad, payload: five satellites for various purposes (Japan)
• LV Soyuz-FG, Baikonur, payload: manned spacecraft with crew for the ISS Soyuz TMA-15M

December 2014:

• Soyuz-2.1B LV, Plesetsk, payload: Glonass-K communications satellite No. 12
• LV Proton-M, Baikonur, payload: communication satellite Yamal-401
• LV Strela, Baikonur, payload: Condor-E observation satellite
• Soyuz-2.1B launch vehicle, Plesetsk, payload: Lotos-S communications satellite No. 2
• Soyuz-2.1B LV, Baikonur, payload: Observation satellite Resource-P No. 2
• LV Proton-M, Baikonur, payload: Astra 2G communications satellite

February 2015:

• Proton-M LV, Baikonur, payload: Inmarsat 5F2 communications satellite (UK)
• Soyuz-U LV, Baikonur, payload: Progress M-26M cargo transport ship
• Soyuz-2.1A launch vehicle, Plesetsk, payload: satellite with unspecified purpose Bars-M

March 2015:

• Proton-M LV, Baikonur, payload: Express-AM7 communications satellite
• Dnepr LV, Yasny launch pad, payload: KompSat-3A surveillance satellite (South Korea)
• Soyuz-FG LV, Baikonur, payload: manned spacecraft with crew for the Soyuz TMA-16M ISS
• Rokot, Plesetsk LV, payload: Gonets-M communication satellites (3 pcs.)
• Soyuz-ST-B LV, Guiana Space Center (Kourou Cosmodrome), payload: Galileo FOC communications satellites (2 pcs.) (European Union)

Also, the orbit of the ISS was adjusted using the Progress M-21M transport cargo ship, and crews on Soyuz TMA11-M and TMA12-M spacecraft returned from the ISS.

By the number of space launches, our country takes 1st place in the world.