RIA Novosti: First Russian satellite, manufactured by a private company for private funds will be put into orbit in 2014 already and most probably onboard the “Progress” state-owned cargo vehicle, – believes “Sputniks” General Director Andrei Potapov. “Sputniks” is the branch of ScanEx RDC that in November 2011 became the Skolkovo Center resident. The company plans to create small-size space vehicles of 12 to 50 kilograms.
"Within two years we plan to build our own satellite – the technological demonstrator to test and fine-tune the systems. It will be used for solution of applied tasks in limited mode, for example for Earth surface imaging at 50 m resolution, – said Andrei Potapov in his interview to RIA Novosti.
On Thursday October 4 it was the 55th anniversary of the first man-made Earth satellite launch – the starting point of the space era. However, the first fully functional Russian private satellite will enter the orbit most likely closer to the 60th anniversary, when “Sputniks” will launch into orbit the first serial vehicle, intended for example for Earth remote sensing.
Creation of the micro- and nano-satellites is no news. Such vehicles are created around the world by private companies and universities. Thus, for example, five CubeSat standard satellites are to be launched from the Japanese Kibo module of the ISS (one of them was manufactured by Vietnamese radio fans.
Such universities as Bauman MSTU and Lomonosov MSU were engaged in the manufacturing of micro-satellites in Russia. However, micro-satellites that “Sputniks” company plan to launch will really become the first private Russian spacecrafts.
"Those are very small and cheap satellites, but they are capable of solving different applied tasks and will become a part of the space industry, a part of market economy”, – noted Andrei Potapov.
A private platform
“Sputniks” specialists are planning to design their own space platform – a unified module, based on which the customer will be able to “put together” a customized space craft. One basic module – a hexagonal “tablet” named TableSat – can be connected with other similar modules.
"We have been designing our own original contraption, having no parallel in existing projects. Nowadays we have been developing service systems that can be later on assembled into our own platform, – said Andrei Potapov.
He believes that future “tablet” satellites will operate also for Earth observation purposes at medium resolution of 10 to 50 meters. Such images can be useful for studying the crops status, forests (e.g. in search for illegal loggings) and other solutions.
"The idea is to launch a wide scanning camera onboard the microsatellite, which will ensure the imagery within the swath of around 600 km at the medium resolution. This will allow taking images of large territories and then in certain intervals doing comparative analysis of images to assess changes and to receive updated information about the condition of territories in our country”, – noted the agency’s interviewee.
In their characteristics those vehicles should similar to the UK-DMC2 small-size satellite, developed and produced by the British Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL) company.
What to fly on?
Potapov admits the “bottleneck” of this project is the delivery of devices onto the orbit. As a rule, microsatellites are inserted into orbit as a secondary payload during the launch of big apparatuses. “Sputniks” company counts on cooperation with Roscosmos and hopes that it will be possible to take the advantages of the International Space Station.
"We try to work out several scenarios of launch within the framework of the scientific space studies at ISS. Probably, we will be able to follow the same scheme as during the launch of the “Chibis-M” satellite (the micro-satellite for studying storm discharges, created at the Space Research Institute), when the “Progress” cargo vehicle will be used as the payload carrier”, – said Potapov.
However, at such a scheme the satellite will be put into the orbit with the same inclination as the ISS orbit, which is not always good for the imaging purposes.
"Anyway, we do not exclude the possibility of commercial launches on the international market of launching services. But, of course, we are interested first of all in cooperation with Roscosmos in this issue”, – added Potapov.
Andrei Potapov noted that Roscosmos started to favor private business. “This is a great achievement. Words about private-public partnership and about probable transfer of service tasks into private hands started to be voiced up. Private companies in space industry may achieve quite a high efficiency rate. It is only a question of the state policy”, – marked the interlocutor of the agency.
"I think that in three-five years from now large private space firms may appear in Russia, which in some industry sectors will be able to compete with leading Roscosmos enterprises”, – concluded Andrei Potapov.