Belarusians attending International Space School in Samara

Belarusians are taking part in the 9th International Space School which opened in Samara on 19 August.

The goal of the school is to shape a single inter-university education space in the area of promising space technologies. According to Igor Belokonov, director of the school and professor at Samara’s State Aerospace University (SGAU), the two-week school brought together representatives of universities from Belarus, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Spain, Germany, Colombia and Estonia. The students will familiarize themselves with the university's program for scientific experiments, plans for the development of the Samara-based space rocket center TSKB-Progress, and hear a course of lectures on the engineering and control of micro- and nano-scale satellites. Participants of the school studies will acquire knowledge of the use of computer-aided technologies for making satellites and designing electronic systems of spacecraft.

The school’s education program has been recognized by SGAU's foreign partner universities and may be subsequently taken into account in the Master's Degree curriculum.

The school runs until 31 August.

The international summer space schools have been held in Samara since 2003. The activities of the first schools resulted in the implementation of the space mail project YES-2 funded by the European Space Agency. The project sought to create a brand new way of delivery of small cargoes from space to the Earth, for example the results of space experiments. A capsule with the cargo would be let down from the orbit with the help of superlight rope made of polyethylene fiber. Such material is not only light but also solid: weighing 5 kilograms the 30-kilmeter-long rope is able to carry about several hundred kilograms of cargo. Following the capsule's descent by several tens of kilometers, special devices at both ends cut the rope which was then burnt up in a dense atmosphere. Meanwhile the capsule was inflated by gas increasing in size and descending to the Earth at a minimum speed as if by a parachute.

The project was successfully implemented in 2007 during the flight of the research capsule Foton M3 and the result was recorded in the Guinness Book of Records, Igor Belokonov said.