Every Monday in the new issue of “News of high technologies” we summarize the results of the last week, talking about some of the most important events, the key discoveries and inventions. Today we talk about the Russian flight to the moon, the water on the asteroid. Below the news you can find in a text format.
Dear rocket
Create a super-heavy launch vehicle and use it to fly around the moon could cost the Russian budget of 1.5 trillion rubles. About it reports the edition “RIA Novosti” with reference to its sources in the space industry. As reported by one of the interlocutors of the Agency, the draft Federal target program for the creation of super-heavy rockets and unmanned flight around the moon will be prepared by “Roskosmos” and submitted to the government by January 15.
We are talking about a program designed to 2020-2030 with the prescribed amounts. The source reports that currently, various options are super-heavy carrier with a different value, but “on average, the program requires around 1.5 trillion rubles.”
In this case we are talking only about the development of rockets, creating a prototype and conducting one unmanned flyby of the moon. In the disclosed amount does not include the development of spacecraft that will be launched along with it. Its creation will be financed for another program. Also envisaged in the above-mentioned timing of a manned flight around the moon. But again, this will require additional funding.
The appearance of the carrier rocket will be determined at the meeting of the scientific and technical Council of Roscosmos on 18 December.
Truck on hydrogen
The development of a new model of electric car very few people can surprise. But electricity is not the only alternative energy that can be applied in practice. And recently, the Swedish automobile giant Scania, specializing in the production of trucks, said that already preparing to release his first truck, running on hydrogen, called Renova.
In the framework of the project on creation of Renova Scania collaborates with the Swedish energy Agency and the Stockholm Royal Institute of Technology. But the most interesting thing about this project is that Renova is not just a truck, and a garbage truck.
The use of fuel cells, hydrogen is an attractive alternative for heavy commercial vehicles like garbage trucks. Trucks in this plan is much more profitable than passenger cars.
It is expected that the first Scania truck with hydrogen fuel cells will be delivered in late 2019 — early 2020. For the same period is scheduled to begin the first tests of the new car.
The accident at the “Union” being investigated
Oleg Kononenko and Sergey Prokopyev during a spacewalk from the ISS opened micrometeorite protection of spacecraft “Soyuz MS-09” and found under it a hole. Samples of the sealant, which was closed on the hole and the surface around him Kononenko put in the insulating container. These samples will return to Earth for more detailed study.
To get to the hole, the astronauts had to cut two pieces of protective material, instead of one as previously planned. In this case, the material was not discovered track, which could remain in contact with the drill if the hole someone made on the inside of the ship.
During communication with MCC in the course of the study the holes on the “Union” Kononenko said that he sees around him some black-and-yellow of education. Apparently, it was a cloth impregnated with a sealant, which astronauts installed in the opening in August of this year.
Instead of the intended six and a half hours of Russian cosmonauts spent in space 7 hours and 45 minutes.
Water on the asteroid
The operation of the spacecraft OSIRIS-REx, launched in September 2016 to study asteroid Bennu, is beginning to bear fruit. The probe reached the orbit of the space object recently, on 3 December, but have already discovered on the asteroid’s surface water. According to researcher Amy Simon, we are not talking about water in its pure form, but only the presence of “hydrocodoneusa minerals”. The discovery surprised scientists, however, they made one important conclusion.
According to them, the material from which is Bennu, once interacted with water. Most likely the asteroid broke away from a larger space object on the surface of which there was plenty of water in the liquid state. This large object can be compared with the asteroid Ceres, part of which is a thick layer of ice.
Researchers believe that the mineral content of water scattered throughout the area of the object.
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