On March 22 from Baikonur launched three nanosatellites for space exploration by schoolchildren.
The Soyuz-2.1.a rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome launched 38 nanosatellites from 18 countries into orbit. Three of them were created as part of the all-Russian Space Pi project.
“This is not an ordinary event. Imagine that everything that used to be in a large rocket in a large volume now fits in a small carrier. The Space Pi project is designed to give students the opportunity to bring their designs to life, which they submitted to the contest. More than a thousand entries were accepted for the Planet Watch contest, of which only 20 were selected. The second mission of this program is that for the first time we are trying to do all this on the domestic platform and on the domestic software,” says Professor of the Higher School of Applied Physics and Space Technology, SPbPU Sergey Makarov.
Let us remind you that the Space Pi project was organized by the Foundation for Assistance to Innovations together with the Russian Schoolchildren Movement, Russian universities and high-tech companies. Its main objective is to give schoolchildren an opportunity to realize their ideas in the sphere of space. For example, to take pictures of river overflows or fires.
Another launch is planned for this fall, in November. We are talking about sixteen 3U-format cubesats of domestic production, which will be launched from the Vostochny launch site. Cubsats are ultra-small artificial satellites in the form of 10 * 10 cm cubes, which are equipped with solar panels, video cameras to conduct a space survey of the Earth’s surface and other payloads.
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Within five years, the Space Pi project plans to put into orbit about a hundred ultra-small satellites as a payload, including during launches of Soyuz-2 launch vehicles.
