Academician Zeleny revealed the details of the meeting of scientists with the head of Roscosmos Borisov

– Lev Matveyevich, what caused the need for a meeting?

– Roskosmos has a new leader – Yuri Ivanovich Borisov. Of course, he was familiar with the problems of space, since before the new appointment he oversaw the industry as a deputy prime minister. But scientists still have concerns: the political and financial conditions are now difficult, as if to prevent our hard-won projects, which we have been working on for many years, would not be postponed for a long time.

– Moreover, a number of missions have already either been canceled – for example, the Russian-European Martian program “ExoMars”, or half curtailed – as a survey of the sky with the help of Russian and German telescopes installed on our Spektr-RG apparatus …

– Those decisions were made abroad for political reasons. However, in addition, we periodically encountered internal sequestrations, as a result of which the implementation of many of our projects was postponed. Last year, at the joint request of the leadership of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Roscosmos, our most important areas of activity were supported, and we have already begun to receive funds.

During a recent meeting between Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin and the head of Roskosmos (it was broadcast on television), the president directly said that, among many important things, both scientific and deep space should be dealt with. That is, what we do.

The RAS is responsible to the state for the section of the Federal Space Program called “Basic Space Research”. We are the customer of these studies, we determine the main areas of activity: where to fly, what to explore. Therefore, realizing the complexity of the current situation, in which everything can change, we asked Yuri Ivanovich for a meeting in order to once again convey to him and to the leaders of the main directions of the Federal Space Program the importance of our research.

The meeting took place. From our side, it was attended by several representatives of the Space Council of the Russian Academy of Sciences, heads of individual scientific sections. These are Boris Shustov, chairman of the extra-atmospheric astronomy section, Anatoly Petrukovich, chairman of the solar-terrestrial relations section, and Oleg Orlov, head of the space biology and medicine problems section.

– That is, it was about almost all areas of scientific activity in space?

– Nearly. For example, the topic of creating a new Russian Orbital Service Station (ROSS), which will eventually replace the ISS, is, of course, relevant, but we spoke about it in some detail earlier, at a meeting of the RAS Space Council. Therefore, our meeting with Yuri Borisov this week was devoted mainly to robotic spacecraft.

I’ll start with the Bion-M project. Director of the Institute of Biomedical Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences Oleg Igorevich Orlov made a report on the plans for its implementation. Like the previous projects of the “Bion” series, it will be devoted to the study of the effects of the physical factors of space flight on various biological objects placed inside the vehicle.

We had an idea to send the new Bion-M to the same high-latitude orbit that ROSS will fly in the future. Manned spacecraft have never flown there before – we have the opportunity to be the first to study the influence of a higher radiation environment in the so-called polar orbit. The project as a whole is ready. It will take some time to make adjustments related to flight in high latitude orbit. Therefore, we are worried about him, so that nothing breaks.

Boris Shustov, scientific director of the Institute of Astronomy of the Russian Academy of Sciences, spoke about the project, which some call the “Russian Hubble” – this is the Spektr-UF space observatory. It is also not far from completion, but there is a danger of delaying the financing of the project, which we now expect to launch in the next decade, exists.

Speaking about the priority tasks facing Spektr-UV, Boris Mikhailovich noted the study of exoplanetary atmospheres and comets, the physics of the atmospheres of hot and cold stars, and star formation processes. With the help of the telescope, we will obtain images of objects in the ultraviolet region of the electromagnetic spectrum, inaccessible to observations from the Earth: from 100 to 320 nanometers. Importantly, Spektr-UV will fly simultaneously with the American James Webb telescope, which observes the sky in the infrared range, and supplement its data.

– When will we have devices that explore the area of ​​solar-terrestrial relations?

– Director of IKI RAS Anatoly Alekseevich Petrukovich just made a report on this. It was about studying the problems of solar-terrestrial physics, or rather, the Earth’s inner magnetosphere, with the help of the Rezonans-MKA spacecraft.

The fact is that we do not currently have a single apparatus working in this area. We make good space weather forecasts, but all this is done on the basis of data from foreign devices, mainly American satellites, which record solar wind parameters and look at the Sun in various ranges of the electromagnetic radiation spectrum.

Cooperation, of course, must be continued, but it would be better to have an independent system for predicting space weather. We have, for example, our analogue of GPS – the domestic GLONASS system. The same independent system should exist in the sphere of the study of solar-terrestrial relations. This project also has little left to complete. Its launch is now planned after 2025.

– What did you personally report on?

– I talked more about the planets, in particular, about the importance of exploring Venus. Venus has now become the most fashionable planet. Abroad, a whole fleet is equipped for it: last year, two American missions were approved, European, Indian, this year – Chinese.

We have also been preparing our Venera-D project for a long time, we have a good start, a program that includes the study of the atmosphere, the study of the surface, and the search for traces of life. It is clear that the study of the Venusian greenhouse effect, worldview questions about the origin of life in completely different conditions is of great importance for the Earth.

– Is Venera-D financed?

– Yes. Just the other day, we defended the next stage of technical proposals. This mission is planned by us for the late 1920s and early 1930s. Long away. But this must be done, especially since, thanks to Soviet research, foreigners once called Venus “the Russian planet.” We have already had 10 landings on it, and the new project also has plans to land a device on the surface of this planet. By the way, this is no longer in any other foreign project!

Landing a device on Venus is our know-how, try to do it on a planet where the pressure is almost 100 atmospheres!

Let’s get back to the most painful: the canceled ExoMars project, which was supposed to deliver a Russian landing platform and a European rover to the Red Planet. Was it not clear?

– With this project, everything is much more complicated. I stood at its origins. It was supposed to fly around these days, but due to political differences, the European Space Agency refused to fly it. Our letters, which we have been writing since March to the ESA with a request to be attentive to our joint offspring, did not help either.

Well, I am glad that at least Roskosmos has an understanding of the importance of all the mentioned space projects, as well as an attentive attitude towards people of science. The meeting was held the day after Lev Zeleny’s birthday, and Yuri Borisov congratulated him by presenting him with a gift – a model of the Soyuz-MS spacecraft – the model on which our cosmonauts now fly to the ISS.