Ghostly Signals From Outer Space
The advanced Russian scientific satellite Spektre R has been operating for a year now since it’s successful launch in 2011. The first public results of the research being conducted by the RadioAstron community have been made available at the end of June. According to the latest news release they are now achieving an impressive 7 earth spans in the signal area. That’s one big receiver!!!
The basic idea is that by combining the signals received by the satellite with those received by powerful dishes here on earth the end result provides a total receiver size according to the distance between the satellite and the location on earth. At the apex of it’s orbit the Spektre R is 7 times the distance from the earth as the radius of the earth. Hence 7 earth spans is achieved.
The next generation Spektre RG satellite is already being built. In the coming decade Russian spacecraft will see significant progress due to careful planning and harsh lessons learned from the failed Phobos-Grunt mission in 2011. Perhaps it will be the Russians who finally make a vehicle capable of transporting humans further than low earth orbit.
Although with the increasing speed of development from the private sector and Chinese ambitions too they have some serious competition. Now that the US government has effectively crippled NASA for the coming decade and are betting on the private sector to take up the slack it is interesting times for the advancement of human space travel.
Our only problem now is stopping the greedy Elite’s in charge of the banks and military industrial complex from starting WWIII. Hopefully they will realise that their is nothing to gain from setting the world on fire and we will be able to refocus our efforts on the international space program instead.
