SOCHI (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 19th July, 2021) Russian school students will build and launch into space a probe microscope to study a spaceship's exterior, educational center Sirius said Monday.
The microscope is being developed as part of the Sirius Big Challenges science and technology program and is set to launch in 2022. It will spend two years scanning high-quality images of different materials in the Earth's atmosphere. The images will be transferred to the Earth for further research of materials to be used for the ship's exterior.
"At the Big Challenges program students are building a first prototype probe microscope, which will be installed on a nanosatellite and sent to the orbit of up to 500 km [310 miles] high," Sirius said.
In the past, such research could only be conducted on Earth in carefully replicated conditions. The new microscope will help examine the way different elements behave in actual space.
Sirius is a Sochi-based educational center for gifted children, opened in 2015 at the initiative of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
