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Cooperation with Russia

Seminar on Russian-Czech cooperation in space research

Czech Space Office in collaboration with the Russian Centre of Science and Culture in Prague organized an international seminar on Russian-Czech cooperation in space research. The event was attended by nearly four tens of Czech and Russian experts, who discussed the issues of future cooperation.

On Tuesday, October 14th in the Faculty of Nuclear and Physical Engineering International there was held a seminar named "Russia-Czech cooperation in space research" organized by Czech Space Office in collaboration with the Russian Centre of Science and Culture in Prague. The seminar was attended by 38 guests, mostly experts in aeronautics, journalists, but among those there were present were also students, attracted by the opportunity to get to know the current state of Czech-Russian cooperation in astronautics.

The Russian side had the seven contributions there, by Jurij N. Agafonov, Vladimir M. Gotlib, Mikhail M. Mogilevskij, Vladimir N. Nazarov and Georgy N. Zastenker from the Institute of Space Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences. They presented the existing cooperation with Czech scientists, many of whom were present at the seminar. The issue was particulary the research of magnetosphere and its interaction with the solar wind, plazma physics and other fields. This project involved a team from the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Charles University, that has experience thanks to former projects that were handeled several years ago. The project names are Rezonans and Plasma-F for the Russian scientific satellite Spektr-R.

Another Czech partner in the Russian space projects, the Institute of Atmospheric Physics ASCR, is engaged in the development of the satellite Spektr-R. The Institute iss also involved in the project of minisatellite Chibis-M for research of new physical mechanisms occurring in the Earth's atmosphere. Launch of the Russian minisatellite is scheduled on 2010. Another interesting technology program, where the experts from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics (specifically tracking station Panská Ves) are also involved, is the solar sail launched by rocket Volna rocket lifted off from a submarine. This program aims to prove usefulness of solar sails in practice. Participants of the seminar also learnt information about other Russian projects in which the Czech experts are not involved yet – e.g. observatory Spektr-UV, Spektr-X or Gamma, interplanetary probes Phobos-Grunt, Luna-Glob and Venera-D.

As a repesenative of Czech experts Josef Blažej from the Department of Physical Electronics, Faculty of Nuclear Sciences and Physical Engineering, CTU in Prague presented his contribution. In the lecture there were introduced the projects, in which the department had participated in the past. It was a detector for laser minialtimetr on Mars 96 spacecraft or Russian LIDAR detector for the U.S. Mars Polar Lander 98. The main point of the lecture was the introduction of potentially interesting projects the Department of Physical Electronics works on. It is focused on a laser distance measurement of satellites, development and production of single photon detectors based on avalanche photodiodes and time intervals meters with a picosecond accuracy.

At the end of the seminar there was an informal discussion between the representatives of the Russian Space Research Institute and the seminar participants. We hope that the seminar will deepen Russian-Czech cooperation in space research that will further evolve after the entry of our country in the European Space Agency.