Specialists of the Russian Mission Control Centre have begun a unique experiment

Friday, February 3, 2023

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Specialists of the Russian Mission Control Centre have begun a unique experiment, YES-2, to test space mail, the director of the flight of the scientific orbiting laboratory Foton-M3, Nikolai Sokolov, told ITAR-TASS on Tuesday. He said the “capsule Fortina has jettisoned from a Foton satellite and begun descent on a special 30-kilometer tether”. The inflatable capsule with payloads is heading for the Earth on a superlight polyethylene fibre line called dynima. This material is light, but strong. The five-kilogramme line, which is only half millimetre in diameter, can hold weights of hundreds of kilogarmmes. After having been lowered in orbit to a 30-kilometre height, the capsule will detach from the line, beginning descent to a destination point of the globe. The line will burn down in the dense atmosphere. Parachutes will open at a five-kilometre height over the Earth for making the landing soft. “The landing of Fortina is expected at 11:55 Moscow time on an outskirt of Kazakhstan’s city of Derzhavinsk,” Sokolov said. Russian scientists have developed the YES-2 experiment together with European researchers and university students.

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