The Polish satellite will be launched into orbit on Friday by SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket. EagleEye is not only the largest, but also the most advanced Polish satellite. A Polish cosmonaut is also preparing for a space flight. In turn, the Americans still cannot return. Their 8-day adventure may last 8 months.
It weighs 52 kilograms – more than all Polish satellites sent into space so far. It is not only the largest, but also the most advanced. – The EagleEye satellite is the first satellite designed and built from scratch in Poland – informs Marcin Mazur, project manager EagleEye Creotech Instruments.
On Friday evening, the Falcon 9 rocket is to launch the satellite into orbit. – Once it is in this target orbit and passes the so-called commissioning, i.e. verification in orbit, checking whether all systems are working, whether the satellite can be used safely, it will begin its operation. And the operation consists of taking photographs in specific areas of the Earth – informs Jędrzej Baran from the Space Research Center of the Polish Academy of Sciences.
Polish business and science are increasingly ambitious in conquering space. Dr. Sławosz Uznański has his first week of preparations for a space mission behind him.
The second Pole in history is scheduled to fly into orbit at the turn of April and May 2025, provided that a certain space problem is solved by then.
The international space station has become crowded. Two American astronauts flew there for 8 days, but will probably spend 8 months in space. The delay is due to a failure of the engines of the Starliner spacecraft that brought them to orbit and was supposed to return.
– The Teflon seal in the system that supplies the oxidizer to the engine is bulging, but the problem is that they don't know why. They managed to repeat this mistake on Earth, but they still don't know the reason why it's happening – explains Krzysztof Kurdyła from the Foundation “Science. I like it.” – Manned space flight is not easy. There have been many problems with every spacecraft. That's the nature of our job – admits astronaut Barry Wilmore.
Aurora seen from spaceENEX/NASA/Matthew Dominick
This is not the first time that the stay in space has been extended
It seems likely that they will not return until February with another space mission – aboard the Dragon spacecraft from Space X. They will stay in orbit with seven other astronauts from the US and Russia. They will not run out of food, because unmanned transport capsules reach the station orbiting over 400 kilometers above the Earth's surface. They will also be given new tasks.
– We are dealing with people who are space veterans. Sonita Williams and Barry Willmore – these are people who were in orbit for over 300 days in your case, over 180 days in your case, so they know how to behave in space – emphasizes Hubert Kijek, a journalist for TVN24 BiS, the author of the program “Kijek in Space”.
It is not the first time that space travel has been extended, although not always due to failures. – In the early 90s, Sergei Krikalov, a Soviet astronaut, flew into space as a Soviet astronaut, and in the meantime the Soviet Union collapsed, Russia and independent Kazakhstan were established on the territory of which there was the Baikonur Cosmodrome, and for a long time they did not know what to do with Krikalov – recalls Jarosław Juszkiewicz from the Silesian Planetarium and Radio 357. Sergei Krikalov stayed in space for 311 days.
Main image source: youtube.com/Creotech Instruments SA.