Space Agency Head Says Russian-US Solar Sail Experiment to Continue
Posted on: Friday, 9 September 2005, 18:00 CDT
Text of report by Russian news agency ITAR-TASS
Moscow, 9 September: The Solar Sail international space project will continue, the head of the Federal Space Agency (Roskosmos), Anatoliy Perminov, said today during a live dialogue with listeners of the Mayak radio station.
"Because the American side has initiated the project, our colleagues have taken the decision to continue it. The Russian side intends to propose a new rocket instead of the Volna," Perminov said. The two previous launches failed. Then the spacecraft after all failed to separate from the booster rocket and were destroyed in the dense layers of the atmosphere.
Apart from the experiment with the solar sail, Russia intends to continue operating the Russian-made space shuttle, Klipper, Perminov noted. The head of Roskosmos is convinced that "the fact that our spacecraft combines the reliability of Soyuz and the level of comfort of Shuttle can be considered to be its main advantage. We assume that Klipper will withstand at least 24 flights and will be able to take up to six people on board: the spacecraft's commander, a flight engineer and four passengers. The craft will take off vertically, but it will land like an aeroplane. In future, spacecraft created on the basis of Klipper, will be able to become a means of transporting a crew to the moon".
However, Russian cosmonauts will not find themselves on Mars any time soon. "Manned flights to Mars are not envisaged in the Federal Space Programme for the period of until 2015. For the time being, we limited ourselves to a 500-day experiment on the ground which will start next year. An international crew consisting of six people will be put together as part of that experiment," Perminov said.
However, Russian spacecraft will after all appear near the Martian orbit by 2015. "We are planning to launch an unmanned spacecraft to Mars' satellite Phobos. The whole system of take-off and landing, as well as taking samples of soil will be practised during the flight," Perminov stressed.
Source: BBC Monitoring Former Soviet Union
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