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| INTRODUCTION |
| HISTORIC |
| LANDMARK |
| DATES |
| LISTENERS |
| 40 SPONSORS |
| GUY's weekly |
| NEWS |
Guy's weekly
Choose :
Air & Cosmos, in a page written by Albert Ducrocq, presents reflections and
comparisons between Sputnik-1 in 1957 and Sputnik PS2 in 1997, under the
title "40 years of revolutions".
Spoutnik Magazine (Toulouse, France), in a special September/November 1997
issue about "Sputnik", publishes on page 42, the call issued by Aero-Club
de France for personal stories about the great event of the launch of
Sputnik-1, first artificial satellite of the Earth. Tuesday 7 October 1997
After a welcome by Victor Kourilov and the delegation of
Russian students, each of us receives a small gift from Moscow. Installation
goes fast, because we already know the place. The rooms have not been used
in our absence, and now is seems that the guest house is empty. It's a
little bit warmer than during our first stay because heating is on. Outside,
the trees have lost almost all their leaves and taken their winter dress. No
snow however.
Wednesday 8 October 1997
Finally, we arrive in Zvezsdnii Gorodok : Star City. The Colonel who
welcomes us is very sympathetical and organises our visit with great
mastery. One cosmonaut joins in to welcome us. 6000 persons live in the City
which is a small town. For the first time, it opens to young French junior
high school students.
The main building houses the flight training center with diverse
simulators. Pilot-cosmonaut A. Afanassiev and his flight engineer are
training in the Soyuz TM simulator. He welcomes us with open arms to our
great surprise, because the training of the cosmonauts appears to be
somewhat confidential and usually they do not like to be disturbed in order
to keep their concentration.
After the unavoidable photo session, we are led to the MIR simulator. From
the control desk our Colonel
explains all the technical details of the Space Station. Now be beginning
understanding the operation of MIR, but it
is a great emotion to see the elements full scale.
Later during the visit, we can have a close look at the different element,
and of course a session of photos. Our young students are disciplined and
listen to the explanations with great attention. They ask questions and the
Colonel gives many new details.
Facing the water pool where the have reconstituted the accident of the MIR
space station, he explains the next technical EVA by the cosmonauts and the
modifications in the electronics that the engineers must realise to improve
the performance of the diverse operations.
The visit ends with the Centrifuge which is truly huge. It is powered by a
direct electrical line, and when it is turned on, there are power cuts in
other parts of Moscow. From the momentum, after the end of training, it is
possible to recover 80% of the used energy, through a generator which is
coupled to the Centrifuge. The dynamic shape of the system does not create
any pressure increase, but violent air flow which have to be controlled by
vents in the roof. The young person in charge tells that when the equipment
was operated for the first time, many plastic tiles got loose from the floor.
In the reception hall, we meet other cosmonauts who are happy to learn that
in La Reunion, there is so much interest for their work. They encourage our
young students to continue scientific studies and to possibly join them.
After dinner taken at the Center with other Russian friends, we visit the
Museum of Star City. We have in
mind the description given by Claudie Andre-Deshays in her book " A French
woman in Space " (in French), when
we enter Gagarine's office, the place where the cosmonauts come to meditate
and to sign the book before they depart for Baïkonour.
Returning to our temporary home in Korolev goes rather fast.
Thursday 9 October 1997
The town is a small city located on the rim of an artificial lake. We stop
at the Monument to the memory of Tsiolkovski (Serguei's grand-father),
before we visit the space monument in the center of the city. Serguei's
mother waits for us in front of her house, and the young students rush into
the living-room where the furniture is quite similar to what we have in La
Reunion. She offers us apples, but after the interview, we have to go. She
comes with us at the school where her father was teaching Mathematics and
Physics. The school has set up an educational museum where we are led by a
student who speaks Russian. We answer the welcome speech, and after
exchanging flags and pins, we sign the guest book.. some twenty students of
the school are learning French, but we could only meet the teacher and one
of his students.
After dinner at the restaurant where we eat borchtch, we go to
Tsiolkovski's house, that one he bought to
install his workshop. It is much visited by students who come from all over
the country. The so-called "skies' gate", an opening in the roof of the
workshop, enabled the scientist to use his telescope to observe the stars.
It is shown to all the students who visit.
The team then goes to the burial place of the great man, and there is a
moment of meditation, when everyone lays a red carnation, which is the
flower of remembrance in Russia. After a picture in front of the Vostok
rocket that stands in front of the museum located at the other hand of the
park, the assistant of the curator welcomes us. She speaks French, and in
spite of the late hour, she shows us the collections of the largest space
museum in the Federation. The exhibits are either prototypes or full scale
models. We also discover a large number of space ships that were sent to the
Moon to bring us a wealth of information.
At the end of this very educational visit, we officially give a Sputnik 40
Years display model to the Museum. It will join the model of the first
Sputnik in the first hall and will welcome the visitors. At night, returning
to Moscow seems to go faster. Everyone is thinking of the video encounter
with Space Station MIR on the next day.
Friday 10 October 1997
At the said time, our team is sitting in the control center. On the large
central screen we can see the spot of light that indicates the MIR Space
Station. It was flying over Patagonia and the trajectory leading towards
Russia was crossing over the Atlantic Ocean and Africa. The contact began
without really noticing. It was hard to believe that the 2 cosmonauts on the
screen were inside the space station. There was a big applause in the
control room when Commander Soloviev went to take the micro-satellite and
presented it in weightlessness in front of the camera. For a good half-hour
there were then questions from the students and from the VIP's. Then, after
a good-bye, the transmission stopped as it had begun. We had to leave room
for the transmission of the numerical data of the flight. Our young
students have then understood all the importance of the event in which they
had taken part, and shown their great emotion to the various journalists who
were now asking them questions.
There was then a press conference, directed by Mr. Kourilov, which allowed
us to meet with the partners
who have helped us from the Russian side. The first high-school
non-governmental micro-satellite programme is a full success, even if the
finance is not totally sorted out. A follow-up of the space program for the
youth is then presented. It could certainly lead to extended developments of
exchanges between our two countries.
We leave after handing Reydellet College's flag to the Director of TSUP to
thank him for his welcome and for the unforgettable day that the students
have experienced.
Saturday 11 October 1997
Time flows rather quickly. After lunch, it was raining again, it did not
help during the visit of the city.
However, we stroll along the alleys in the Movodevitchi monastery, and the
students discover the architecture of
orthodox churches. We admire the flamboyant colors of the century-old trees
that adorn the park.
The visit in the Metro is an important moment. The most beautiful metro in
the world is up to its reputation. We have admired the marmor walls, the
sculptures, the mosaics, the silver and crystal candlelight's. The high
speed of the trains enables large crowds to move swiftly across the city.
Our visit of Moscow ends under heavy rains that drive us quickly into the
bus. In Moscow, our team has met with sun, snow, hail and rain...
Sunday 12 October 1997
The visit of the church of Christ-the-Savior is only possible from the
outside, since like many religious
places in the city, it is being renovated. It is built on the place of the
largest open air swimming pool in Europe. The
first stone was laid on the 7 January 1995, and 3000 workers work here night
and day. They carve marmor in front of the visitors, and the result is
magnificent. The building is made of white marmor topped with golden domes
that shine in the sun.
After lunch, V. Kourilov takes us to Moscow's University. This building,
with its Stalin era architecture, is
standing on a small hill from where it is possible to see the whole city.
The place in front of the University had
recently been selected by Jean-Michel Jarre for his public concert in the
honor of the 850th anniversary of Moscow.
While returning to the city, our team visits the Red Square, and especially
the Kremlin Wall. Here culture
meets with space projects when our delegation stops for a silent meditation
in front of the ashes of the great hero
Youri Gagarine.
The rest of the evening was dedicated to a show : V. Kurilov and the
Russian Astronautical Federation take us to the Bolshoi to attend
performance of the "Golden Rooster", a playwright by Putshkin with a music
by Rimski Korsakov. The hall is splendid and the students, even if they did
not understand the words, were fascinated by the magic performance.
Monday 13 October 1997
Nathalie Pottier and her group of students greet us on the car park of the
Institute, on the other side of the city. The visit begins with Lab. N°9 and
the rockets. The professor is very nice. He gives all kinds of explanations
on the structure and construction of the rockets. This is a very secretive
field, and few foreigners have made such a visit. It is hard to imagine
these huge tanks full of liquid hydrogen ready to explode at the first wrong
manoeuver. The other labs are just as interesting : the aircraft lab. where
soon the Sukoi have no more secrets for our students, and then the
helicopters. Everything is drafted by hand, even basic calculations.
Computers are only used at a later stage, for additional work. The visit
ends with the space suit shop, and our students try them on. These are
costly items, considered as precious goods that one touches only with the
utmost respect.
Before our departure for the airport, we give our second display model of
Sputnik 40 Years to the Director of MAI, for the school's museum. This item
will be a souvenir of the visit of young French students to one of the most
prestigious institutes of the Russian Federation.
The programme of our visit is now completed. We are going back to La
Reunion where we shall wait for the launch of PS2 in outer space, on the
coming 3rd November 1997. The bus takes us to Sheremetyevo. The "good-byes"
to the students from Naltchik and the many thanks to Victor Kourilov and
Nicolas Bodine were filled with great emotion. Then customs, police,
boarding without any problem.. on our way back home !
The BF frequency will vary with the temperature inside the micro-satellite,
according to the grid published by
AMSAT-France :
Measurement will be possible for the OM who can have a digital recording of
the signal.
The exact launch time is not known, nor the geographical footprint. The
orbit will be MIR's, at the time of launch.
We would be happy to receive the BF frequency data, as well as the Keplerian
data obtained from Doppler
measurements.
Radio-Club FR5KJ (College Reydellet) will offer a certificate to thank the
OM who will send QSL cards (reception
reports) together with two IRC and a self-addressed envelope. The structural module of the satellite has been designed and made by
students of the Center for Polytechnical
Education in Naltchik, capital of the Russian Republic of Kabardino-Balkar,
with the support of engineers from the
RKK ENERGIA Complex. The electronic module has been studied and built by
students of the Radio-Club of
College Reydellet in Saint-Denis de La Reunion, France, with the help of
radioamateurs and members of AMSAT-
France, and with the support of ANVAR, the DRRT Regional Research and
Technology Department of La Reunion, the GENERAL COUNCIL of La Reunion, and
the REGIONAL COUNCIL of La Reunion.
AERO-CLUB de FRANCE controls the French part of the programme. The
ASTRONAUTICAL FEDERATION of
RUSSIA is general leader for the whole "Sputnik 40 Years" programme, under
the direction of Victor Kurilov.
Maison de La Reunion (CNARM), in Paris, the PROTEL company (specialist of
new information and
communication technologies) and AIR FRANCE have greatly helped the programme
with their operational support. EURO SPACE CENTER, in Redu, Belgium, has
offered free "space" training to the young team from College Reydellet, to
prepare them for the launch operations of their satellite.
Important remark : we still have unpaid bills, and for a balanced budget,
the "Sputnik 40 Years" programme still
needs eight financial sponsors for amounts of 30 000 F or 6 000 $ each. The
organisers have no doubt that other
institutions, other companies and other individuals will join the ones who
already support the programme, to share this exceptional adventure. They
have no doubt that the readers of this "weekly" will make their best efforts
to invite the participation of new sponsors.
Guy Pignolet, of Aero-Club de France, has given TECSAT the official sponsor
certificate, and a display
model of the Sputnik 40 Years satellite manufactured in La Reunion by the
students of College Reydellet.
TECSAT, a leader of the Brazilian technology, owns one of the most modern
plants in the world. Over the
past 12 years, TECSAT has become the most important telecommunication
manufacturer in Latin America, with 15
companies that take part in diverse fields of the economy, both on the
civilian and defence markets.
Located in Sao Jose Dos Campos, in Manaus, in Argentina and in the United
States, TECSAT has installed in Brazil more than 3 million receivers and
decoders for satellite TV, becoming the national leader with 80% of the
market. TECSAT has established an excellent international reputation through
its export sales. It also produces equipments for cable TV and cellular
telephones, as well as mobile units for Broadcast TV. TECSAT has build
transponders for the Brazilian satellites, and manufactures enough optical
fiber every year to cover the distance between the Earth and the Moon.
Today, TECSAT, who has considerably invested in digital technologies, is
developing its projects all over the world.
Contacts between TECSAT and the Sputnik 40 Years programme were first
established by Captain Basilio Baranoff, President of NAEE (Nucleos de
Atividades Espatiais Educativas) and organizer of the first Brazilian
seminar dedicated to space education, on the 21 and 22 October 1997. The
pilot-cosmonaut Alexander Serebrov, President of the all-Russia "Soyuz"
space education association, is also taking part in this seminar. 1n 1993,
Alexander Serebrov had launched in space the commemorative scale model of
Tsiolkovski's rocket which had been built by the students of the Center for
Polytechnic Education in Naltchik.
The structural module of the satellite has been designed by students of the
Center for Polytechnical Education in
Naltchik, capital of the Russian Republic of Kabardino-Balkar, with the
support of engineers from the RKK
ENERGIA Complex. The electronic module has been studied and built by
students of the Radio-Club of College
Reydellet in Saint-Denis de La Reunion, France, with the help of
radioamateurs and members of AMSAT-France, and with the support of ANVAR,
the DRRT Regional Research and Technology Department of La Reunion, the
GENERAL COUNCIL of La Reunion, and the REGIONAL COUNCIL of La Reunion.
AERO-CLUB de FRANCE controls the French part of the programme. The
ASTRONAUTICAL FEDERATION of
RUSSIA is general leader for the whole "Sputnik 40 Years" programme, under
the direction of Victor Kurilov.
The commemorative "school" satellite programme "Sputnik 40 Years" is
sponsored and financially supported by LA POSTE, by the ROYAL AIR MAROC
Airline Company, by M. LEON DEBORD, and by the FRANCIS WESLEY
FOUNDATION. In Russia, the programme is supported by RKK ENERGIA company,
followed by the INSTITUTE
for BIOLOGICAL and MEDICAL PROBLEMS (IMBP), by the ACADEMY of SCIENCE of
RUSSIA, by
INKOMBANK and by the LOUKOIL-TRANS company.
Maison de La Reunion (CNARM), in Paris, the PROTEL company (specialist of
new information and
communication technologies) and AIR FRANCE have greatly helped the programme
with their operational support. EURO SPACE CENTER, in Redu, Belgium, has
offered free "space" training to the young team from College Reydellet, to
prepare them for the launch operations of their satellite.
Maison de La Reunion (CNARM), in Paris, the PROTEL company (specialist of
new information and communication technologies) and AIR FRANCE have greatly
helped the programme with their operational support.
In Russia, the programme is supported by RKK ENERGIA company, followed by
the INSTITUTE for
BIOLOGICAL and MEDICAL PROBLEMS (IMBP), by the ACADEMY of SCIENCE of RUSSIA, by
INKOMBANK and by the LOUKOIL-TRANS company.
The "PS-2" Sputnik 40 Years satellite is now on board of space station MIR,
ready to be launched in space by
cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov sometimes between the 18 and the 20 October.
The
structural module has been
designed by students of the Center for Polytechnical Education in Naltchik,
capital of the Russian Republic of
Kabardino-Balkar, with the support of engineers from the RKK ENERGIA
Complex. The electronic module has been studied and built by students of the
Radio-Club of College Reydellet in Saint-Denis de La Reunion, with the help
of radioamateurs and members of AMSAT-France, and with the support of
ANVAR, the DRRT Regional Research and Technology Department of La Reunion,
the GENERAL COUNCIL of La Reunion, and the REGIONAL COUNCIL of La Reunion.
EURO SPACE CENTER, in Redu, Belgium, has offered free "space" training to
the young team from College Reydellet, to prepare them for the launch
operations of their satellite.
AERO-CLUB de FRANCE controls the French part of the programme. The
ASTRONAUTICAL FEDERATION of
RUSSIA is general leader for the whole "Sputnik 40 Years" programme, under
the direction of Victor Kurilov.
... BLANK PAGE:
The commemorative "school" satellite programme "Sputnik 40 Years" is
sponsored and financially supported by LA POSTE, by the ROYAL AIR MAROC
Airline Company, by M. LEON DEBORD, and by the FRANCIS WESLEY
FOUNDATION.
Reminders : More than one hundred years ago, LA POSTE created the Union
Postale Universelle, the first major
planetary organisation. And in Casablanca, at the very center of the
activities of the ROYAL AIR MAROC Company,
where all the African airline pilots are trained and where the new Concorde
pilots receive their qualifications, the
spirit of Saint Exupery is very much still alive.
Maison de La Reunion (CNARM), in Paris, the PROTEL company (specialist of
new information and
communication technologies), who among other things, was the organizer of
the videoconference between La Reunion and Moscow on the 20 February 1997,
and AIR FRANCE (who granted special low fares for the dynamic team of the
Reydellet High School) have greatly helped the programme with their
operational support.
In Russia, the programme is supported by RKK ENERGIA company, followed by
the INSTITUTE for BIOLOGICAL
and MEDICAL PROBLEMS (IMBP), by the ACADEMY of SCIENCE of RUSSIA, by
INKOMBANK and by the
LOUKOIL-TRANS company.
One flight model and one backup model of the "PS-2" Sputnik 40 Years
satellite are in Baïkonur, ready to fly to
space station MIR to be launched in space by cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov. A
third model of the satellite is in
Moscow, for the celebrations of the 40th anniversary of the launch of the
first artificial satellite of the Earth.
The
structural modules have been designed by students of the Center for
Polytechnical Education in Naltchik, capital of
the Russian Republic of Kabardino-Balkar, with the support of engineers from
the RKK ENERGIA Complex. The
electronic modules have been studied and built by students of the Radio-Club
of College Reydellet in Saint-Denis de La Reunion, with the help of
radioamateurs and members of AMSAT-France, and with the support of ANVAR,
the DRRT Regional Research and Technology Department of La Reunion, the
GENERAL COUNCIL of La Reunion, and the REGIONAL COUNCIL of La Reunion.
EURO SPACE CENTER, in Redu, Belgium, is now offering free "space" training
to the young team from College
Reydellet, to prepare them for the launch operations of their satellite.
AERO-CLUB de FRANCE controls the French
part of the programme. The ASTRONAUTICAL FEDERATION of RUSSIA is general
leader for the whole "Sputnik
40 Years" programme.
... BLANK PAGE :
In Russia, it is supported by RKK ENERGIA, followed by the INSTITUTE for
BIOLOGICAL and MEDICAL
PROBLEMS (IMBP), the ACADEMY of SCIENCE of RUSSIA, INKOMBANK and LOUKOIL-TRANS.
The "PS-2" Sputnik 40 Years satellite is ready today to be sent next 3rd
October to space station MIR for launch by
cosmonauts Anatoly Soloviev and Pavel Vinogradov. The structural module has
been designed by students of the
Center for Polytechnical Education in Naltchik, capital of the Russian
republic of Kabardino-Balkar, with the
support of engineers from the RKK ENERGIA Complex.
The electronic module has
been studied and built by
students of the Radio-Club of College Reydellet in Saint-Denis de La
Reunion, with the help of radioamateurs and
members of AMSAT-France, and with the support of ANVAR, the DRRT Regional
Research and Technology
Department of La Reunion, the GENERAL COUNCIL of La Reunion, and the
REGIONAL COUNCIL of La
Reunion.
10 September 1997 :
The commemorative "school" satellite programme "Sputnik 40 Years" is
sponsored by LA POSTE, the ROYAL AIR
MAROC Airline, M. LEON DEBORD, and the FRANCIS WESLEY FOUNDATION.
In Russia, it is supported by RKK ENERGIA, followed by the INSTITUTE for
BIOLOGICAL and MEDICAL
PROBLEMS (IMBP), the ACADEMY of SCIENCE of RUSSIA, INKOMBANK and LOUKOIL-TRANS.
The "PS-2" Sputnik 40 Years satellite is ready today to be sent next 3rd
October to space station MIR for launch by
cosmonauts Anatoly Soloviev and Pavel Vinogradov. The structural module has
been designed by students of the
Center for Polytechnical Education in Naltchik, capital of the Russian
republic of Kabardino-Balkar, with the
support of engineers from the RKK ENERGIA Complex.
The electronic module has
been studied and built by
students of the Radio-Club of College Reydellet in Saint-Denis de La
Reunion, with the help of radioamateurs and
members of AMSAT-France, and with the support of ANVAR, the DRRT Regional
Research and Technology
Department of La Reunion, the GENERAL COUNCIL of La Reunion, and the
REGIONAL COUNCIL of La
Reunion.
Dear reader, you will find hereafter the final programme of this very fine
operation, as defined today. The complete
financing has not been totally secured yet, especially for the travel of the
young French and Russian students. It is by going on forward that progress
is made, this has been the philosophy of the programme, and it made it
possible to reach the technical achievement of building the first "school"
satellite in history.
This construction and the preparation for space flight
were made with the greatest enthusiasm, by those who gave freely their time
and their knowledge, by those who due to the necessities of life were
obliged to ask for a salary or for a payment as a
counterpart for their participation which nevertheless was full of sympathy
for the project,
and by those who offered with generosity their financial support to cover
these payments and other needs that dilute in the general economics. The
ultimate steps are essential for the educational valorisation of the
programme. Please help more sponsors join us to make these final steps
happen in a well deserved serenity.
03 September 1997: Then, in the company of
their Russian colleagues, their programme will include technical and
cultural visits, especially to Star City, to the
Tsiolkovski Museum in Kaluga, to RKK Energia, to the Museum of Cosmonautics,
and most of all to the Spaceflight Control Center TSUP, where they will have
direct conversations with the cosmonauts aboard space station MIR. Not
mentioning an evening at the Boschoi Theater. Return from Moscow is expected
on the 15th October 1997 and return to La Reunion on Friday 17th October. The project board has decided that if the invitation is confirmed, the
project will be represented by Victor Kurilov and Nathalie Pottier, who will
present to the President of the French Republic one of the flight models of
the school satellite "Sputnik 40 Years". Victor Kurilov, National Commissar
for Space Flight at the Russian Federation of Astronautics, is the Director
of the "Sputnik 40 Years" Programme. Nathalie Pottier, a French student in
Cosmonautics at the Moscow Aviation Institute, made the technical
translations during all the essential steps of the project, especially
during the design meetings in La Reunion in April 1997, in the presence of
cosmonaut Alexander Serebrov, and during the Paris meetings in August 1997
for the final integration of the satellite.
When will the Sputnik 40 Years transmitter be activated ? How far will Sputnik 40 Years drift away from the MIR Space Station ? Frequency and modulation mode ? Receiving equipment ? It is decided that the French part will participate for 10 000 US$,
depending on the finances which it controls from the participations of the
sponsors, and it will try to continue its participation and search for new
sponsors, up to a total participation of 40 000 US$, representing one half
of the amount that the Russian Astronautical Federation has to pay to RKK
Energia and other organisations for the environment testing of the satellite
and its launch to space station MIR, the total cost of 80 000 US$ being the
result of a general sponsoring by the RKK Energia complex, who will provide
on its own for the operations aboard space station MIR.
If the French part
cannot meet the minimal share of 25 000 US$ before the end of the month of
August 1997, the Russian part will consider the possibility of launching
only a non-functional model to space station MIR, with no transmitter and no
batteries, to decrease the mass and to decrease the cost. The first part of the Sputnik 40 Years is completed, with the construction
of the satellite, and already it is rich of many teachings with great
educational potential. The second part, qualification and launch of the
satellite begins..
SPONSORS : Acknowledgements to all the sponsors who have supported the
construction of the "Sputnik 40 Years" satellite :
The commemorative and educational "Sputnik 40 Years" programme is
coordinated by the Russian Astronautical
Federation and by Aero-Club de France. The structural module has been
designed by the students of the Center for Polytechnical Education in
Naltchik, capital of the Russian republic of Kabardino-Balkar, with the
support of
engineers from the RKK ENERGIA Complex. The electronic module has been
studied and built by students of the
Radio-Club of College Reydellet in Saint-Denis de La Reunion, with the help
of radioamateurs and members of
AMSAT-France, and with the support of ANVAR, the DRRT Regional Research and
Technology Department of La
Réunion, the GENERAL COUNCIL of LA REUNION, and the REGIONAL COUNCIL of LA
REUNION.
The programme is supported by sponsors who will make possible the launch of
the "Sputnik 40 Years" satellite and the participation of the young
designers from Naltchik and from La Reunion at the launch. The general
sponsor for the Russian part is RKK ENERGIA, followed by the INSTITUTE for
BIOLOGICAL and MEDICAL PROBLEMS (IMBP), the ACADEMY of SCIENCE of RUSSIA,
INKOMBANK and the LOUKOIL-TRANS company. The first sponsors for the French
part are LA POSTE, the ROYAL AIR MAROC Airline, M. LEON DEBORD, and the
FRANCIS WESLEY FOUNDATION.
A new campaign of sponsoring is necessary to take the programme to its final
conclusions : the financial participation of 5 new sponsors with 6 000 US$
each is necessary to guarantee the launching operations, and 10 more
sponsors are needed to cover the direct participation of the young students
to the launch operations. THANKS TO ALL THE READERS OF "SPUTNIK 40 YEARS
WEEKLY" for their help in this ultimate and necessary call to sponsors, so
that enthusiasm and hope for "Youth for Space" may live.
Paris - 14 August 1997
"Sputnik 40 Years", first scale model satellite, has a mission to
commemorate the 40th anniversary of the launch of the launch of Sputnik-1.
It is scheduled to fly to MIR in October 1997, and then, to be launched into
space on the
occasion of an EVA.
"Sputnik 40 Years", identified under the name of "PS-2", will be launched by
hand by a cosmonaut from the MIR
Space Station. The satellite has a mass of 3 kg. It will transmit on the
radioamateur frequency of 145.8 megahertz
with a 0.2 watt output power. It should operate for about 30 days, until
exhaustion of the power supply batteries. The atmospheric reentry should
occur approximately one and half year after launch.
From 12 to 14 august 1997, a delegation of the Russian party, who was
responsible for the fabrication of the
mechanical structure, and a delegation of the French party, who was
responsible for the construction of the electronic assembly, have met
together in Paris to proceed with the integration of the test and flight
models of "Sputnik 40 Years"
On the 2 August, the two delegations have met at the Maison de La Reunion in
Paris for a presentation of the
"Sputnik 40 Years" programme, in the presence of French cosmonauts
Jean-Pierre Haignere and Claudie Andre-
Deshays, of Alexandre Dorokhov, Scientific Attache at the Russian Embassy in
France, and of some sixty other
persons.
On the 13 August, with the participation of the Russian Engineers Serguei
Sambourov, of RKK Energia, Serguei
Vassiliev, of the Russian Federation of Astronautics, and Gérard Auvray,
Vice-President of AMSAT-France, the
delegations have met at the headquarters of AMST-France in La Celle
Saint-Cloud, for a general technical review,
before the certification tests that will take place in Moscow between the
19th August and the 1st September 1997.
On the 14th August, the delegations have met at Aero-Club de France for a
selection of the official logo of the
3Sputnik 40 Years" Mission and for the ceremony of the official delivery of
the electronic modules built by the French part to the Russian part.
The commemorative project "Sputnik 40 Years" is coordinated by the Russian
Federation of Astronautics and by
Aero-Club de France. The mechanical part was designed by students of the
Center for Polytechnical Education in
Naltchik, capital of the Russian Republic of Kabardin-Balkar, with the
support of engineers from RKK Energia. The
electronic part was elaborated and built by students of the Radio-Club of
College Reydellet in Saint Denis de La
Reunion, with the assistance of radioamateurs and members of the
AMSAT-France association, and with the support of ANVAR, DRRT-Reunion,
GENERAL COUNCIL of La Reunion and REGIONAL COUNCIL of La Reunion.
The programme is supported by sponsors, who will provide for the launch of
the "Sputnik 40 Years" satellite and to
enable the participation of student delegations from Naltchik and from La
Réunion at the launch operations. The
general sponsor for te Russian Part is RKK ENERGIA, followed by the
INSTITUTE FOR MEDICAL AND
BIOLOGICAL PROBLEMS (IMPB), the RUSSIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, INKOMBANK and
LOUKOIL-
TRANS. The first sponsors for the French part are LA POSTE, ROYAL AIR MAROC,
Mr. LEON DEBORD and
the FRANCIS WESLEY FOUNDATION. The support from additional sponsors will
enable a larger number of
students to participate directly in the launch operations.
"Sputnik 40 Years", first operational "school satellite" in the world, is a
realisation of the "Space for Youth" cooperation programme which was signed
between the Russian Astronautical Federation and the Aero-Club de France on
the 20 February 1997.
Speakers at the Press Conference : The pictures of Sputnik 40 Years will be available on the Internet site :
http://www.oceanes.fr/~fr5fc/spoutnik.html
The incidents are serious, but not dramatic, and it appears from the
information given by CNES as well as received directly from our Russian
friends that the safety of the station or of the cosmonauts has never been
endangered. On the first degree, these incidents have demonstrated that the
MIR system is robust and reminded that the station has become a "normal"
working place with all the usual problems.
For the good conduct of the
repair operations and to guarantee the quality of the scientific work of
French cosmonaut Leopold Eyharts, his mission to MIR has been postponed to
early in 1998, but no change is expected in Jean-Loup Chretien's flight to
the space station in September 1997, via the US space shuttle.
Our SPUTNIK
40 YEAR program is only slightly affected, with a one month delay in the
launch towards the station which, according to Victor Kurilov, is expected
to be carried on a Progress spacecraft on the 1st October 1997. Launch in
space will occur during the first EVA, by cosmonauts Anatoli Soloviev and
Pavel Vinogradov (who speaks French). There will be a small shift with
regards to the date of 4 October 1997, but we may say that Sputnik 40 years
will already be in space, only it will start operating just a few days later. A link budget calculation made by Gerard Auvray
tells that with a transmitter power of
200 mW, the Sputnik 40 Years signal will be received by radioamateur
equipment to a distance of 2 000 km.
"Ribbon" antennas are proposed to facilitate transportation and assembly of
the satellite on board of station MIR.
Radio amateurs are planning world-wide "open house" operations to enable the
general public to listen to the "beep-beep"s of Sputnik 40 Years.
Concerning
the operations by RKK Energia, Victor Kurilov was able to obtain new
conditions for the transportation of Sputnik 40 Years. It appears that there
are now 5 major sponsors in Russia, and that their participation will cover
the minimal launch operations. The funds collected by Aero-Club de France (3
confirmed sponsors at the date of 10 July 1997 - a new campaign is under
way) will enable the travel of as large as possible delegations of students
for direct participation at the launch operations from the Korolev (formerly
Kaliningrad) control center TSUP.
" The essence of space exploration is not only the search for immediate
benefits, but also a lot of symbolism :
We find the same motivations in modern projects. Everyone agrees that the
scientific interest of the Alpha space station is small (for example we know
that its microgravity will be of lower quality than what we can obtain now
in laboratories on the surface of the Earth), but everyone agrees to make
it. If it is called Alpha, this is not a tribute to _Space 1999_ , this is
pure symbol.
The next flight to Mars, I think, will be Pathfinder. It will use a large
part of its resources only to
eject a camera that will turn around to take a picture of the spacecraft, to
enable Man to receive a picture of an object sitting on the surface of Mars
(which of course Viking was not able to do). The scientific interest of such
a picture is nil, but it carries a very high symbolic load.
All this to say that it is worth to spend time, money, and even orbit
space for actions which have purely a symbolic meaning, because this is also
the goal of space exploration... "
* The manuscript of the witnesses of Sputnik-1 will be released, on a
non-exclusive basis, for all the Sponsors and everyone who, world-wide, will
decide to use it in any form. Send your personal account on ONE A4 format page
(210x297mm), with 25mm margins on all sides.
All the languages of Planet Earth are acceptable, as well as
drawings. On a separate page, please indicate you full name
and full address. You should attach a translation of your text
in French, in English or in Russian if your original text is not
written in any of these three languages.
Please send your contribution to :
All entries will remain the joint property of Aéro-Club de France and
Astronautical Federation of Russia. All entries shall be accompanied with a
manuscript mention signed by the author : "I release all copyrights and
authorises Aéro-Club de France and the Astronautical Federation of Russia to
make use of this text in any
form".
Within the frame of the commemoration of the fortieth anniversary of the
launch of Sputnik-1 and of the beginning
of space era, the Radio-Club FR5KJ proposes a participation to its actions
with logo designs on this theme.
The logo shall be drawn on professional art paper of a size of 240 x 320 mm
with a 40 mm margin on all sides.
The shapes of the drawing are free, but as a rule, they should remain simple
to allow for easy reproduction on
various supports. It will be made in three colors, blue, white and red,
which are the colors of the French and
Russian flags. The background will be black, with stars. Compulsory mentions
: ' Sputnik 40 years (in French and
in Russian), 1957-1997.
No name and no address should appear on the same side as the drawing. They
will be mentioned on the other side,
with a handwritten text explaining the logo. It will be signed by the
artist, who will write in his own handwriting :
' logo contest participation of xxxx, who releases all forms of copyright to
FR5KJ '. The absence of this declaration
will void the entry.
A jury will select the best projects, who will receive prizes, and announce
which project will be officially approved.
All the projects will remain the property of the club who will have the
right to use them freely.
The projects should be sent to club FR5KJ, 103 rue de la Republique, 97489
Saint Denis Cedex, La Réunion,
France.
Question :
how many times will the two objects fly very close of each other before they
eventually collide ? - Additional question : what dammage will be caused by
the collision ? destruction of a few photovoltaic cells ? - cut the antenna
? - decompress a cosmonaut ? break a window ? - I am not laughing, I do not
doubt that this is a serious project, but still, I would like to know for
sure " // who will answer this one ?
Those who are 55 may tell : " I was 15 ! I remember "... A kind of
astonishment ... and an awesome
feeling too. News keep falling : a strange noise, from the radio. - comes
from beyond the Earth. - from a contraption sent up there. - it revolves
around the Earth, at a tremendous speed, in a few hours. - a kind of Moon, a
satellite. - it originates from behind the Iron Curtain, from Russians who
sent it up there, Soviets. - could be dangerous; what will they do with it;
what will follow ? - a word is told, a strange word, full of resonance :
Sputnik.
I was in the United States, on this 4 October 1957, in Harvard, and
boarding a taxi to take me to the
Observatory. The driver tells me ... he just heard of it. His emotion is
such that he can hardly drive.
Then a few things find their place somewhat, minds too. The new information
comes with a special
vocabulary. They tell of a "spacecraft", a sphere with antennas, that
transmits a repetitive, obsessive "radio signal", comparable to nothing
else. Everyone says "beep-beep", everyone tells everyone else. The message
is loaded with mystery.
The "spacecraft", well, has been sent up there by a rocket, like the ones
we were talking about, but this Russian rocket must be gigantic. More words
are brought forth. The "spacecraft" has entered "cosmos"; other say "space".
What is it ? we need a dictionary : space = non-limited medium in which
sensible objects are located. Oh ! and cosmos = the Universe considered as
an organised and harmonious whole. Well, it must be some world beyond the
Earth, the world which astronomers explore.
They tell of an "artificial satellite". We learn that in Russian, Sputnik
means satellite. Already, a mystery has been cleared. Everyone understands :
Sputnik, beep-beep. The magic of words.
Forty years have gone by. Space probes run through the Solar System, other
ones have explored the worlds of the planets. Twelve men have trodden on the
soil of the Moon. All the parts of our globe are tied together by space,
examined, scrutinised, informed from space.
Sputnik-1 was designated "heritage of Mankind". Let's be reminded of that.
Let's also remind it ...Audouin DOLLFUS, Astronomer, Member of the Board of Administrators of
Aéro-Club de France
B) Text of the call to prospects
Dear Friend,
Let's be clear : this is about funding !
To implement this beautiful program, we need you, we need your help, and in
the following lines, we'll tell you why we need your help and how you can do
it : A last word : thank you !
Commission Astronautique of Aero-Club de France
6 rue Galilee - 75116 Paris - France / fax +33 1 44 76 79 59
C) The 40 Sponsors program (press conference of the 27 March 1997)
To help the students put their satellite in orbit and highlight their feat,
Aéro-Club de France and the Astronautical Federation of Russia made a
promise to find the necessary quarter million dollars and more by calling
world-wide for the participation of major Institutions, Business, Private
Persons and all motivated men and women. AeCF and AFR offer :
40 "tickets" at $ 6,000 and more
The project began on the 20 February 1997. Final assembly of the satellite
will be in July 1997. The scale model
will be taken to the MIR station in August 1997. It will be launched in
space by hand by a cosmonaut on the 4
October 1997.
Sputnik 40 Years has a single objective : to commemorate the 40th
anniversary of Sputnik-1!
... are the coordinators of the world-wide aspects of the Sputnik 40 Years
project : the Astronautical Federation of
Russia in Moscow and Aéro-Club de France in Paris.
... are The 40 exclusive Sponsors, the witnesses of the 40th anniversary of
the coming of Mankind into Space Age.
* the "essential" operations for launching the satellite into orbit and
sending it into space and the "additional"
outreaching operations for world-wide highlighting of the program are
covered by the contributions of the sponsors in the form of tickets at "$
6,000 and more".
* The $ 6,000 will be allocated for the costs of the launch itself and for
associated operations. They will be
managed by Aero-Club de France on accounts located in Paris.
* The " more ", without limits, will be allocated for the outreaching
operations and managed by the Astronautical
Federation of Russia on accounts located in Moscow.
The essential part of $ 6,000 will be received from the sponsors on a
special account opened by Aero-Club de
France. The number of essential parts will strictly be limited to the number
of 40. Each contribution of $ 6,000 will be allocated as follows : a
transfer of $ 4,000 will be made to a dedicated account especially assigned
for the payment of the launch costs proper, and 4 equals transfers of $ 500
each will be made to the benefit of Aero-Club de France, the Astronautical
Federation of Russia, the Radio-Club of Reydellet High School and the
Laboratory for Polytechnic Education in Naltchik, who will freely use these
funds for the good advancement of the project.
The additional part, without limitations, will be directly received from the
sponsors on a special account of the
Astronautical Federation of Russia for use in educational operations to
benefit the youth of the world.
The manuscript of the witnesses of Sputnik-1 will be released, on a
non-exclusive basis, for all the
Sponsors and everyone who, world-wide, will decide to use it in any form.
If major circumstances would prevent the launch of the Sputnik 40 Years
satellite, the "dedicated part" of $ 4,000 will be returned to the sponsor
or, if his choice, transfered for the benefit of the International Fund
"Youth for Space".
D) Web Addresses :
is the national expression
of sovereignty, public authority and excellence,
in a world space environment where Europe,
markets and partners are key concepts.
In France, the Sputnik 40 Years program is
coordinated by the Astronautical Commission of
with operational support of the teams of
E) The Sputnik 40 Years model which was presented at the French Scale Model
1997 National Exhibit :
BLANK PAGE : BLANK PAGE : BLANK PAGE : BLANK PAGE : BLANK PAGE :
27 March 1997 : 27 March 1997 : Four parts of an equal amount of
$ 500 will be attributed to each of the main operators of the program, for
the good advancement of the project :
AeCF, AFR, Laboratory for Polytechnic Education in Naltchik, and Reydellet
School in Saint Denis. 27 March 1997 : 28 March 1997 : 29 March 1997 : 30 March 1997 (Sunday) : 30 March 1997 : 30 March 1997 : 31 March 1997 (Monday) : 31 March 1997 : 31 March 1997 : It might be a good idea to consider the
school as an isolated ship in the middle of
a communication desert, and to install an Inmarsat terminal, but where to
find it ? This idea has been suggested
to Victor Kurilov and Nicolas Bodine (as well as the idea to install e-mail
in the offices of the AFR in Moscow;
where it would work ok; I have several e-mail contacts in Moscow with other
persons, with no problems..) 31 March 1997 : And at the very end of the diner, a standing toast, a very intense
moment of tradition, which may be
experienced, but difficult to tell with words. Translations are made by
Mohammed, a former English teacher
called to help. He translates between Russian and English. He translates
between Kabardin and English.
Russian is not the natural language of many of our guests. Nicolas Bodine,
who lives in Moscow and is also in
Naltchik for the first time, is just as lost as we are, kind of stranger in
Kabardinia... 31 March 1997 : 01 April 1997 : 01 April 1997 : A "good" diner with the ladies in charge
of the school : the Director of the high school and a regional science
Supervisor. Traditional mountain pie
based on a mix of potatoes and cheese. The gentlemen stand up when they
propose toasts in the honor of the
ladies. By tradition, ladies should have no right to propose toasts, but
they take this right. We are in a non-
religious civilian Moslem republic. By the way, the word "republican" is
written in many public places. 01 April 1997 : 02 April 1997 : 02 April 1997 : 02 April 1997 : 02 April 1997 : 02 April 1997 : 02 April 1997 : 02 April 1997 : 02 April 1997 : 03 April 1997 : 03 April 1997 : 03 April 1997 : 03 April 1997 : Half a dozen heavy duty helicopters sit alongside of the runway, geared for
emergency rescue or construction
work (the famous "sky cranes") but they are idle. They stay there, and fly
only once or twice a month. There is
no more public money to buy fuel for them. In the same way, public funding
has become scarce for education or
the maintenance of school buildings. At the beginning of this year, a
scientist of Naltchik committed suicide,
because he had not been paid for six months.
But in Naltchik, there are plenty of cars, even beautiful Mercedes.
Naltchik, with 300 000 permanent
inhabitants, with its large streets ant its parks, is a spa city, spreading
on a gentle slope at the foot of the
Caucasus mountains. During the summer season, people come here for 3-week
health vacation, in four
successive waves. And all around the year, there is mountain tourism and
ski. "In the time of the soviets", when
travelling by plane was inexpensive, people came even from Kamtchatka, from
the other end of Russia. There
were almost one and half million "tourists" every year. Now, air fares have
gone up, a lot, and in 1996, the
vacation business went down to 250 000 people only...
The two Aeroflot YAK-42 (120 seats) which are based in Naltchik shuttle
twice a day between Naltchik and
Moscow. But they also fly to Krasnodar and Erevan, Ankara and Istanbul in
Turkey and ... twice a week, they
fly to Dubai, in the Arabian Emirates, for "shopping flights", with some 70
or 80 passengers who go there to
buy nice gadgets...
While we were waiting, with the Russian pilots and with Georges Ballini, a
former airline pilot himself, we
began to dream : there are 7 000 km between Naltchik and La Reunion, while
the Naltchik-Moscow-Paris-
LaReunion route is almost the double, with 14 000 km. We saw that Naltchik's
YAK-42's, as well as Air
Reunion's small Boeings, could fly the short route with stops, technical or
else, in Dubai and in the Seychelles.
With the help of tour operators, a hundred-some Russians who go for errands
in Dubai might like to extend to
La Reunion to discover unique, world class, breathtaking landscapes and a
top level tourist environment.
Possibly, a hundred-some Reunionnese might wish to go summer-skiing between
the breasts of the highest
mountain in Europe. It could be a charter flight : Aeroflot would make a
round trip, and a week or ten days
later, Air Reunion would do the other round-trip. And there would be about
twenty free seats for students and
teachers from La Reunion and from Kabardin-Balkar. This is only a dream. But
we like dreams when they are
potential reality. 03 April 1997 : 07 April 1997 : 07 April 1997 : 10 April 1997 : 16 April 1997 : 17 April 1997 : 18 April 1997 : 18 April 1997 : 19 April 1997 : 23 April 1997 : 23 April 1997 : 24 April 1997 : 09 May 1997 :
BLANK PAGE : 12 March 1997 : 17 March 1997 : 17 March 1997 : 18 March 1997 : 20 March 1997 : 20 March 1997 : 20 March 1997 :
20 December 1996 : 12 to 19 January 1997 : 10 February 1997 : 12 February 1997 : 13 February 1997 : 18 February 1997 : 19 February 1997 : 20 February 1997 : Margie Sudre, a Minister
of the French Government in
charge of supporting and developing the use of French language in the world,
and also the President of
Reunion's Regional Council is chairing the ceremony. Other participants are
M. Dassonville, representing the
Prefect of La Reunion, General Dallenbach, Commander in Chief of the French
Forces in the South of the
Indian Ocean, Jean-Pierre Benejam, Rector of the Academy of La Reunion,
Alain Deport, Regional Director for
Industry, Research and Environment, Michel Vignand, representing the General
Council of La Reunion, and
Jean-Claude Pieribattesti, Regional Delegate for Research and Technology. 20 February 1997 : 26 February 1997 : 3 March 1997 : 6 March 1997 :Guy Pignolet de Sainte Rose, PhD.
This page is large (100kb); save it (wait during load) then read it off line...
Ingenieur CNES (French Space Agency)
Secretaire de la CASAF (Aero-Club de France)
tel +33 1 44 76 77 09 / fax +33 1 44 76 79 59 (Paris Office)
N°20 SPUTNIK 40 YEARS UPDATE
Monday 27 October 1997
A) Press clips
Space News, the world's weekly for space professionals, has published a
short article on Sputnik PS/2 in its 20-26 October 1997 issue. It was
illustrated with a picture of the prototype, in the hands of Gerard Auvray,
taken at the 1997 Paris Air Show.
B) College Reydellet goes to Moscow
Jean-Paul Marodon, Head of College Reydellet in Saint-Denis de La Reunion,
tells about the trip to Moscow with 5
young students of the "Sputnik 40 Years" Project.
C) Sponsoring
Arriving in Moscow without any problem. We are now used to the place.
Custom and police formalities go smoothly, but no one is waiting for us
outside, and taxis offer to take us to Moscow. Waiting ends with the arrival
of Nathalie Pottier who explains that the journalists of French TV RFO had
problems to take out their equipment. It is 8 p.m. when we take the bus to
go to the RKK Energia guest house in Kaliningrad/Korolev .
Departure of the whole delegation to visit Star City. The roads are very
much crowded and a few hundred
meters after the Center, we run into roadwork and have to make a 2-hour
detour in an incredible traffic jam, because we find also roadwork on the
detour.
8 a.m. : we have the pleasure to see again Serguei Sambourov, who takes us
to his native city, where the Russian cosmonautics began. We are in the
cradle of the conquest of space : Kalouga. The bus travels across large
plains where the horizon is marked by lines of fields or trees. The road is
a long one, and a rough one too. Soon we shall be escorted by police cars
that open the road for us, and we can progress more rapidly. However we are
late, and it is 11 a.m. when we enter Kalouga.
TSUP, the Space Flight Control Center of Space Station MIR, is not very far
from the guest house where we stay, and at 11 a.m., a bus takes us there.
Mr. Latichev, who is responsible for Public Relations at TSUP welcomes us
and tells us about the program of our encounter that will take place in the
afternoon : after a visit of the place, we shall have a contact with MIR
around 3 p.m. . We take our lunch in the Center's cafeteria in order to
waste no time, because the rendez-vous schedule is strict.
The scientific part of the programme is almost completed. The scheduled
visit at MAI will be only possible on Monday, just before departure. V.
Kourilov proposes a visit of Moscow. We begin with the Izmailovski Park. The
lively marketplace offers opportunities to see Russian craftsmanship and
matriochkas, in all sorts of sizes, all sorts of colors. The temptation is
great, but there are also scores of other painted woodcraft, or metal or
earthware...
Yesterday's rain has cleared the skies which have turned steady blue. It is
cold and the visit of Moscow
continues through the Arbat Street, well known for its street shows. It was
too early to see them, but the shopkeepers were beginning to set up their
installations, to the great enjoyment of the students. Putshikin, the
writer, was living in this street, and his house is much visited. The people
here are different from the ones in Park Izmaïlovsky, and several
shopkeepers can speak French. This is a place for tourists.
This is the last day of our visit in Russia. Moscow is under a bright sun.
To our programme, before taking off, we have the visit of MAI (Moscow
Aviation Institute). There is a lot of emotion when we say farewell to the
person who took care of us during our whole stay in Russia. I think that our
team will keep good souvenirs of their
visit at the guest house of RKK Energia.
Some technical indications :
PS2 is a sphere with a diameter of 197mm and a mass of 2800g. The
transmitted power is 200mW. Power is provided by 3 packs of 4 lithium
batteries with 3.5V each. The transmission frequency will likely be
145.820MHz, and it will be also possible to listen to 145.841MHz. The 500mm
antennas are wired with a circular polarisation and it will be possible to
listen to PS2 in SSB and in FM. The sound will be nicer with SSB, but the
Doppler may make the shift appear more complex at the beginning and at the
end of the visibility of the satellite (2000km on the horizon and 300km
overhead the receiving station).
-50 C : 372Hz,
-40 C : 579Hz,
-30 C : 778Hz,
-20 C : 934Hz,
-10 C : 1041Hz
0 C : 1110Hz
+10 C: 1152Hz,
+20 C: 1179Hz,
+30 C: 1195Hz,
+40 C: 1206Hz,
+50 C:1213Hz
The commemorative "school" satellite programme "Sputnik 40 Years" is
sponsored and financially supported by LA POSTE, by the ROYAL AIR MAROC
Airline Company, by M. LEON DEBORD, by the FRANCIS WESLEY
Foundation and by the Brazilian satellite communication equipment company
TECSAT. In Russia, the programme is supported by RKK ENERGIA company,
followed by the INSTITUTE for BIOLOGICAL and MEDICAL
PROBLEMS (IMBP), by the ACADEMY of SCIENCE of RUSSIA, by INKOMBANK and by
the LOUKOIL-
TRANS company.
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N°19 special flash SPUTNIK 40 YEARS UPDATE
SPECIAL FLASH - Monday 20 October 1997, from Sao Jose Dos Campos, Brazil
The Brazilian Company T E C S A T sponsors Sputnik 40 Years
Today, 20 October 1997, at 11 a.m., Brazil time, Antonio Marcio Hisse de
Castro, Director-President of
TECSAT, in Sao Jose Dos Campos, in the State of Sao Paulo, Brazil, has
announced the decision of his company to sponsor the Sputnik 40 Years school
satellite programme.
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N°19 SPUTNIK 40 YEARS UPDATE
Monday 20 October 1997, from Sao Jose Dos Campos, Brazil
15 October 1997 :
two flights models of the Sputnik 40 Years / PS2 satellite
have been sent to MIR on the 5 October, two weeks ago. From the latest
information given by Nathalie Pottier, from MAI, one of the models will be
launched in space on the 3 November 1997, after final checks on board of
Space Station MIR. On Friday 10, 1997, the visual connexion between the
cosmonauts and the students from La Reunion and from Naltchik went very
well. It was a moment of great emotion for the young students.
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N°18 SPUTNIK 40 YEARS UPDATE
Monday 13 October 1997
The commemorative "school" satellite programme "Sputnik 40 Years" is
sponsored and financially supported by LA POSTE, by the ROYAL AIR MAROC
Airline Company, by M. LEON DEBORD, and by the FRANCIS WESLEY
FOUNDATION.
there was No on the 6 October, because of intensive
catch-up work for the International
Astronautical Congress in Torino, Italy...
28 September 1997 : the bus broke down on the highway, and the students from
College Reydellet arrived at the Euro Space Camp in Redu at 03 a.m. in the
middle of the night..
30 September 1997 : the students from College Reydellet have participated in
the TV shows of RTBF (Belgium) and RFO (France).
02 October 1997 : return from Redu to Paris by bus, and installation in Paris.
02 October 1997 : Press conference at Maison de La Reunion in Paris, with
the participation of the sponsors of
Sputnik 40 Years. Audouin Dollfus has delivered the official Sponsor
Certificates, and the College Reydellet students have offered the display
models of Sputnik 40 Years.
04 October 1997 : fortieth anniversary of the launch of the first artificial
satellite of Planet Earth and the opening of a
new era for Mankind : the Space Era !
04 October 1997 : French TV network FR3 show images of the students from
College Reydellet and from the Center for Polytechnic Education in Naltchik.
05 October 1997 : the Spoutnik 40 Years / PS2 school satellite leaves
Baïkonour spaceport on board of a Progress cargo spacecraft.
07 October 1997: the students from College Reydellet take off for the
second time to Moscow, with their teachers
and with a RFO TV crew. Their program is as follows : Tuesday 8 : bus ride
through Moscow // Wednesday 8 : in the
morning, visit of Star City, and in the afternoon, visit of MAI (Moscow
Aviation Institute) // Thursday 9 : all-day visit
to Kaluga, with MIR radioamateur Serguei Sambourov, the grand-son of
Konstantin Tsiolkovski // Friday 10 :
conversation with the MIR cosmonauts, from the TSUP Space Flight Control
Center // Saturday 11 : cultural
excursion in Zagorsk // Sunday 12 : excursion in Moscow // Return to La
Reunion, via Paris, is scheduled for Monday 13.
08 October 1997 : during the night of 8 to 9 October 1997, the Progress
cargo spacecraft was docked to the orbital
station MIR, and the Sputnik 40 Years school satellite was transfered inside
the space station.
09 October 1997 : in Torino, Italy, at the 1997 International Astronautical
Congress, Guy Pignolet tells the adventure of the project and shows the
satellite prototype which had been first presented at the Paris Air Show.
11 October 1997 : the prototype model of the Sputnik 40 Years school
satellite is presented by the French
radioamateurs at the Palais de la Decouverte Paris Science Museum on the
occasion of the French national 1997
Science Festival.
Note about finances : in operations like this magnificent educational
adventure "Sputnik 40 Years", calendar comes first, but there are still
several unpaid bills, and some more bills to come : the programme still
needs 9 sponsors (institutions, companies, individuals) at $6000 each to
balance properly. You are welcome to help. Grateful thanks.
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N°17 SPUTNIK 40 YEARS UPDATE
Monday 29 September 1997
there was no No on the 22 September 1997, because of the
intense preparation work before the
departure of the College Reydellet students for Moscow...
18 September 1997 : the Science & Vie Junior (October 1997) magazine
publishes an excellent 2-page article, with one picture of the Reydellet
students in the company of cosmonaut Alexandre Serebrov and one picture of
AMSAT's Gerard Auvray, holding in his hands the prototype of "Sputnik 40
Years". The article ends with a renewed call to sponsors because, two weeks
only before the scheduled launch, we still need some ten more sponsors to
completely finance the programme...
19 September 1997 : Jean-Paul Marodon presents Sputnik 40 Years during a
conference which had been organized at Saint Denis City Hall by the
Astronomical Association of La Reunion.
19 and 22 September 1997 : Guy Pignolet helps the College Reydellet students
to make the first evaluations of the
programme, in the fields of space technologies and project management.
23 September 1997 : in Paris, Georges Ballini, of Aero-Club de France, and
Alexandre Dorokhov, of the Russian
Embassy in Paris, clear the ultimate visa problems for the visits in Moscow.
23 September 1997: at College Reydellet, under the direction of teacher
Gerard Six, end of the chain manufacturing of a series of 16 presentation
models of the "Sputnik 40 Years" satellite, for the sponsors and the
organizations who have supported the project.
24 September 1997 : at Roland Garros Airport, in Saint-Denis de La Reunion,
at 19:00, official presentation of the
Sputnik 40 Years models to the representatives of REGION REUNION, of the
GENERAL COUNCIL, of DRRT
(Research and Technology) and ANVAR (new technologies). At 21:00, five young
representatives of the French team from College Reydellet take off for Moscow.
25 September 1997 : at the Paris stop-over, Audouin Dollfus and Georges
Ballini, of l'Aero-Club de France, join the
Reunionnese delegation. Arrival in Moscow in the afternoon, and installation
in a residence in Korolev (formerly
Kaliningrad) in the North of Moscow, with three of their young colleagues
and accompanying teachers from Naltchik.
26 September 1997 morning : the "Sputnik 40 Years" group visits TSUP, the
Space Flight Control Center, in the
company of Mikhail Balkizov, Minister of Education and Science in the
Russian Republic of Kabardino-Balkar.
26 September 1997 noontime: the "Sputnik 40 Years" group goes to the French
Embassy in Moscow where they
meet with Mrs Bernadette Chirac, with the French Cosmonaut Claudie
Andre-Deshays, with M. Jacques CHIRAC,
PRESIDENT OF THE FRENCH REPUBLIC, who chats for five minutes with the group
of students, looking at one
of the flight models of the satellite and one display model, in the company
of Claude Allegre, his Minister of
Education.
26 September 1997 afternoon: reception at the Kabardino-Balkar Embassy in
Moscow.
27 September 1997 : in the morning, visit at the Cosmonaut's Museum in
Moscow, with the famous titanium arrow. In the afternoon, visit of Moscow
(Red Square).
28 September 1997 : return to Naltchik for the young Russians and to Paris
for the young French students. Transfer by bus to the Euro Space Center in
Redu, in Belgium.
IMPORTANT NOTE : the programme STILL needs sponsors, this is serious, and
URGENT !
retour au début
N°16 SPUTNIK 40 YEARS UPDATE
Tuesday 9 September 1997
The commemorative "school" satellite programme "Sputnik 40 Years" is
sponsored by LA POSTE, the ROYAL
AIR MAROC Airline, M. LEON DEBORD, and the FRANCIS WESLEY FOUNDATION.
the French Embassy in Moscow invites the whole French
delegation of the Sputnik 40 Years
programme to meet with French President Jacques Chirac when he visits Moscow
on 26 Sept. 1997.
11 September 1997 : Aero-Club de France will send Audouin Dollfus and
Georges Ballini for the meeting with the
President of the French Republic. Guy Pignolet will go to La Reunion for a
"Sputnik 40 Years Open House" at
College Reydellet on the 26 September 1997, with the students of the project
who cannot participate in the mission in Moscow.
12 September 1997 : ordering parts to build 16 exhibit models of Sputnik 40
Years, for the sponsors and the
organisations who helped the project.
15 September 1997 : final touch to the travel programme for the five
students from Reydellet College and their escorts.
During the Press Conference, Thursday 2 October 1997 at 5:00 p.m. at Maison
de la Reunion, 39 rue Gauthey, 75017, the exhibit models will be officially
presented to the sponsors who helped the programme.
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N°15 SPUTNIK 40 YEARS UPDATE
Tuesday 9 September 1997
confirmation of the payment of the first part of the
French participation to the costs of launching of the "Sputnik 40 Years"
satellite.
06 September 1997: in the company of another million persons, Victor
Kurilov watches the show given by Jean-
Michel Jarre for the 850th anniversary of Moscow.
09 September 1997 : initiation of the visa procedures for the 5 students and
5 accompanying adults who will go from France to Russia for the launch
operations for Sputnik 40 Years.
09 September 1997 : telephone conference with Victor Kurilov, Jean-Paul
Marodon and Guy Pignolet, with help from Daniel Quasimodo for translations :
organisation of travel for the French students // discussion of financial
problems // travel of President Jacques Chirac in Russia.
* Organisation of travel : it is expected that the 10-person French group
will depart from La Reunion on Saturday 27
September 1997. After arrival in Paris, they will go to the Euro Space
Center in Redu, Belgium, where they will be
hosted three days long by Director Hugo Maree and his teams. After returning
in Paris, the French team of Sputnik 40 Years will give a Press Conference
at Aero-Club de France before taking off to Moscow in the morning of Friday
3rd October. They will participate in several events held for the 40th
anniversary of Sputnik.
* Financial problems : preparation work continues normally in the hope that
the last financial problems will be solved in due time otherwise, without
basically changing the full programme itself, delays could become a necessity.
* Voyage of President Jacques Chirac: the Ministry of Education in France
has informed Jean-Paul Marodon that
Jacques Chirac, President of the French Republic, will go to Russia at the
end of this month of September,
accompanied by Claude Allegre, Minister of Education. The Ministry envisions
a presentation of the Sputnik 40
Years project at the French Embassy in Moscow on Friday 26th September 1997.
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N°14 SPUTNIK 40 YEARS UPDATE
Monday 1st September 1997
21 August 1997:
publication of a new call for sponsors in the two main
daily newspapers of La Réunion.
31 August 1997: in a telephone conversation, Victor Kurilov announces that
the qualification process for the PS-2
Sputnik 40 Years satellite is almost completed. Especially, the environment
tests for temperature, vacuum and
vibration have been passed with success.
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N°13 SPUTNIK 40 YEARS UPDATE
Monday 25 August 1997
21 August 1997 :
Audouin Dollfus, Guy Pignolet and Charles Hochmann write
the final French version of the phase
2 protocol of the Sputnik 40 Years Programme, concerning the financing of
the launch of the satellite, the exchanges of children and the preparation
of the International Fund "Youth for Space". New calls for sponsors are
prepared for La Reunion and for French major business circles.
21 August 1997 : a tender is sent to the French space clubs for the design
of electronic "beep" modules for the
exhibition model of Sputnik 40 Years intended for the sponsors. The modules
will be built by the students of
College Reydellet.
22 August 1997 : at College Reydellet, after discussing the situation, the
students decide to make a lottery to find
who will go to the launch of Sputnik 40 Years. The lucky winners are :Audrey
Castinel (age 13), Marion Dubreuil
(age 14), Anne-Laure Girbal (age 13), Sandrine Law-Wing-Chin (age 14) et
Jean-Cédric Maillot (age 14).
Accompanying persons are Jean-Paul Marodon, Headmaster of the College,
Jean-Yves Morau, teacher in Biology, Alain Orré, computer specialist,
Gérard Six, teacher in Technology, et Mrs Arlette Marodon, to take care of
the young girls in the group.
22 August 1997 : the first international money order is sent, for the French
participation in the launch costs.
24 August 1997 : the second call to sponsors is sent.
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N°12 SPUTNIK 40 YEARS UPDATE
Monday 18 August 1997
About SPONSORS - IMPORTANT AND URGENT : Please see last paragraph
BLANK PAGE :
there was no paper on the 11 August, because of the preparation
of the visit of the Russian
Delegation in Paris.
04 August 1997:
responses by Gerard Auvray F6FAO to the questions forwarded
by Rudolf Appel, of DGLR in
Allemagne. A full technical description will be given before launch.
07 August 1997 :
The transmitter will be activated in October during an EVA (Extra Vehicular
walking in space) from MIR . The life
time will be approximately 1 and 2 months.
The Spoutnik will be launch be hand so it will not be very far from MIR. But
Mir is doing frequently orbit
adjustments. So we don't know how long the orbital elements will be the same
that MIR. It will be a good exercise for students to try to compute the
orbital elements following the doppler
The frequency will be 145.8 MHz. The antenna polarisation is circular, and
will be Right or Left following how we
will see the satellite. The Spoutnik has no attitude stabilisation, so we
don't know how it will be in space. The
modulation is FM and the BF signal is around 1.3 kHz and it will vary with
the temperature. Another good exercise
for students to measure the audio frequency and see the temperature. The RF
signal sound like a beep beep as it is ON/OFF with a duty cycle of 5 with
0.18 s ON and 0.72 s OFF. The full cycle is around 0.9s. You can listen the
beep beep in FM position or SSB position. The sound is really nicer in SSB
position, but if you want to measure the audio frequency you should be in
FM. It will not be an easy exercise because it is a burst and the dynamic of
frequency variation is low.
In the best case you should be able to receive the signal on a handheld
receiver with an antenna gain of 0dB , but as we will not know the satellite
attitude in space it will be better to have a yagi with 10 dB gain (around 9
elements).
last telephone meeting before the technical meeting between
the French and the Russian parts, with the participation of Victor Kurilov,
Jean-Paul Marodon, Daniel Quasimodo, Gerard Auvray, Georges Ballini and
Vladimir Syromiatnikov (of RKK Energia, on a trip in the French Alps) and
Alexandre Dorokhov, Scientific
Counsellor at the Russian Embassy in France. Where we learn that following a
loss in his family, Michail Balkizov,
Minister of Education and Science in the republic of Kabardino-Balkar, the
Russian Delegation will arrive in Paris one day late, on Tuesday 12 August
instead of Monday 11 August 1997.
11 August 1997 :
arrival of the French Delegation from La Reunion, with
Jean-Paul Marodon, Headmaster of College Reydellet, and Daniel Quasimodo,
Interpreter // Where we learn that Michail Balkizov will not come to Paris
// Translation and review of the protocol documents sent by the Russian part.
12 August 1997, morning :
Jean-Paul Marodon goes to the French Ministry of
Education to deliver his proposal for
the trip of the French students in Russia, from 27 September to 15 October
1997 // integration of the structures made in La Reunion with the
transmitter board built by Gerard Auvray and Amsat-France.
12 August 1997, noon :
welcome of the Russian Delegation in Roissy Airport,
with Victor Kurilov, of the Russian
Astronautical Federation, Chief of the delegation, Hussein Dikinov, Director
of the Center for Polytechnic Education
in Naltchik, Serguei Sambourov, of RKK Energia, responsible for the
radioamateur equipment on board of the MIR
Space Station, Serguei Vassiliev, mechanical engineer with the Russian
Astronautical Federation, and Nicolai Bodine, assistant to Victor Kurilov,
and also Nathalie Pottier, a French student at the Moscow Aviation
Institute, who makes the technical translations // Installation at the
Bouquet de Longchamp hotel near the Aero-Club de France.
12 August 1997, afternoon :
the French and Russian Delegations meet at
Aero-Club de France. First integration tests between the mechanical and the
electronical parts of the "Sputnik 40 Years" satellite.
12 August 1997, evening :
presentation of the Sputnik 40 Years programme at
Maison de la Réunion in Paris, in the presence of sponsors, with Christine
Arpin, representing LA POSTE, and with the French cosmonauts Jean-Pierre
Haignere and Claudie Andre-Deshays, and fifty other persons. Interviews by
TV crews from the French RFO Channel, by the Itar-Tass Press Agency, and by
other Russian journalists. Creole cocktail and diner, Reunion style.
13 August 1997, morning :
Installation in the headquarters of AMSAT-France
in La Celle Saint Cloud, in the West of
Paris, with Gerard Auvray, Vice-President of Amsat-France, and Christophe
Carlier and Julien Forest, of Amsat-
France. Lunch in a nearby pizza restaurant, with Jean Gruau, former director
of the Guyana Space Center, former
General Inspector of CNES and father of the ARSENE radioamateur satellite.
13 August 1997, afternoon :
general review of the technical problems of the
electronic module presented by the
French part.
13 August 1997, evening :
official dinner at the Reunionnese restaurant Eden
Haussman, with the directors of the
Sputnik 40 Years project, sponsors LEON DEBORD and Carolyn Wesley,
representing the FRANCIS WESLEY
Foundation, and Alexandre Dorokhov, representing the Russian Embassy in France.
Night of Wednesday 13 to Thursday 14 August 1997 :
during all evening and
all night, in the workshop of AMSAT-
France, integration of two complete satellites, and of an additional
complete electronic module. At 5 a.m., the first
beeps are broadcasted by the first functional scale model of the first
artificial satellite of Planet Earth, Sputnik-1. In the morning,
continuation of the electrical reception of the modules.
14 August 1997, morning :
at Aero-Club de France, selection of the mission
logo, among the 12 drawings proposed by the Russian party and the 10
drawings proposed by the French party. After a first round with 6
preselected drawings, the final decision is to retain one of the drawings
proposed by the French part and to use in this drawing one of the Sputnik
drawings made by one candidate of the French part in a "Little Prince" style.
14 August 1997, 11:30 a.m. :
Press Conference at Aero-Club de France, et
official delivery of the three complete
electronic sets made by the French part.
14 August 1997:
due to general exhaustion of the two delegations after the
night of working for the technical
reception of the satellite, the scheduled official visit to the Bourget Air
and Space Museum is cancelled. // Jean-Paul Marodon is interviewed, from
Paris, by the media from La Reunion island.
15 August 1997 :
all day, at Aero-Club de France, workshop with the two
delegations for the organisation of the
financing of the launch of Sputnik 40 Years, named "PS-2", which means "Most
simple satellite N°2" with reference to Sputnik-1, which was named "PS-1".
15 August 1997, evening :
organisation of the exchanges between the students
in Naltchik and in La Reunion. Each delegation will include 5 students and 5
adults. The French delegation from College Reydellet will leave La Reunion
on the 27 September 1997 and will first spend 3 days at the Euro Space
Center in Redu in Belgium, where it has been invited by Hugo Maree, Director
of the Center. Then it should go to Naltchik for 3 days to meet with the
students and the teachers of the Center for Polytechnical Education in the
Russian republic of Kabardino-Balkar. Then the French and the Russian
students will go together to Moscow to visit the main space organisations in
the Moscow region and, if possible, have a live conversation with the MIR
cosmonauts from the Flight Control Center. It is expected that the Russian
delegation will travel to La Reunion in November 1997. Depending on the
final status of sponsoring additional exchanges may take place in 1998, or
conversely, a smaller exchange programme may be considered.
15 August 1997, evening :
the Russian part announces its decision to proceed
with the development of the
International Fund "Youth for Space" envisioned in the 20 February 1997
agreements to finance future international
education operations, and leaves the French part until the end of 1997 to
decide on its participation to the Fund,
depending on the effective finance prospects.
16 August 1997 :
at 10:30 a.m., the French national TV Channel FR3
broadcasts for millions of viewers a 2-min. story on the "Sputnik 40 Years"
programme, with cosmonauts Jean-Pierre Haignere and Claudie Andre-Deshays.
At 5 p.m. at the end of the "Charlie-Foxtrot" programme on French national
radio France Inter, Gerard Feldzer, President of Aero-Club de France briefly
presents the Sputnik 40 Years programme for the millions of listeners of the
radio station.
17 August 1997 :
return of Jean-Paul Marodon in Reunion Island. The
Radio-Club of College Reydellet has done its job by providing the Russian
part with a transmitter module which, 40 years later, will broadcast to the
whole world a replica of the famous beeps of the 4 October 1997.
17 August 1997 :
all evening and all night, at Aero-Club de France,
preparation of the official documents and
certificates for the transfer of the radio modules to Russia and for the
continuation of the qualification tests of the two complete satellites, of a
complete electronic module, and of a set of spare parts.
18 August 1997 :
at 12:20 p.m. on the regular Aeroflot flight, the Russian
delegation departs to Moscow. Victor
Kurilov, responsible for the "Sputnik 40 Year" programme intended to
celebrate the 40th anniversary of the beginning of the space era, is
carrying in his bags two satellites ready for space, the result of the work
of two teams of young enthusiast students, with the help of professionals
from two great space faring nations.
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N°11 SPUTNIK 40 YEARS UPDATE
Special Edition - Thursday 14 August 1997
Press Release
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N°10 SPUTNIK 40 YEARS UPDATE
Monday 4 August 1997
BLANK PAGE :
there was no paper on the 28 July 1997 because of the
celebration of the 15 years of U3P, the Solar Sail association, in
Font-Romeu, in the famous French center for solar energy research. If you
wish to receive the new "16 pages - Voiles solaires, comment ca marche, a
quoi ca sert" (in French) please ask by mail at "U3P - c/o CREPS - 1 avenue
de Lespinet - 31055 Toulouse Cedex - France" or by fax at +33 1 44 76 79 59
or by e-mail at u3p@ec-lille.fr .
24 July 1997 :
organisation meeting with Aero-Club de France for the
technical meetings in August :
27 July 1997 :
the model-satellite Sputnik 40 Years is registered by Energia
under the code name of ISZ-1.
27 July 1997 :
the Reydellet High School had 200 T-shirts made in blue and
grey colors with Sputnik 40 Years.
28 July 1997 :
read in "Spaceflight" : the British Interplanetary Society
and the London Science Museum will organize a conference on the 4 October
1997 to celebrate the 40 years of Sputnik era.
30 July 1997 :
the lithium batteries for the flight models have been received.
01 August 1997 :
Victor Kurilov sends a message to announce the work program
in Russia :
03 August 1997 :
a message from Rudolf L. Appel, of DGLR in Germany. He has
echoed the Sputnik 40 Years
information in Germany, with interested returns from teachers organisations.
Questions :
answers in the next "weekly".
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N°9 SPUTNIK 40 YEARS UPDATE
Monday 21 July 1997
BLANK PAGE :
there was no paper on the 14 July 1997 because of travels
across Europe, and much has happened since the last "weekly".
25 June 1997 : a progress cargo spaceship hits the MIR space station,
resulting in a loss of 40% of the available
energy and loss of air in one of the modules. A new incident occurred on
Thursday 10 July 1997 with the loss of
attitude control and on-board energy for one day. These incidents have
called a special attention from the media for the first large international
space station, orbiting around the Earth at an altitude of 400 km with a
mass of almost 100 tons, now continuously inhabited for the past 11 years.
7 July 1997 : the logo contest for Sputnik 40 Years has been advertised in
BOEN, the Official Bulletin of the
French Ministry of Education. Logo proposals have been received from France,
Russia and Germany. A decision
will be taken on the 12 August 1997 during a meeting at FAI (International
Aeronautical Federation) in Paris.
8 July 1997 : the MEGAHERTZ magazine has published two pages of information
on the Sputnik 40 Years project,
with pictures of the technical meetings which took place in Reunion Island
in April 1997.
9 July 1997 : Audouin Dollfus and Guy Pignolet meet Alexandre Dorokhov, head
of the Scientific and Technical
Service of the Russian Embassy in Paris, representing Ambassador Yuri Ryjov
(a former Head of the Moscow Space Institute MAI), for a report on the
progress of the program.
10 July 1997 : technical meeting, by telephone, between Victor Kurilov,
Jean-Paul Marodon and Gerard Auvray,
with the participation of Guy Pignolet and Daniel Quasimodo. First direct
e-mail contacts between the Russian
Astronautical Federation and the French partners, and first direct contacts
with Serguei Sambourov of RKK
Energia, responsible for the radioamateur contacts with the MIR station,
also Vice-President of the Russian
radioamateur association.
11 July 1997 : the 4 "flight" electronic boards are ready, and will be
assembled with the batteries and the "internal"
mechanical parts which hold the electronics.
21 July 1997 : organisational meeting, by telephone, between Victor Kurilov,
Jean-Paul Marodon and Gerard
Auvray, with the participation of Guy Pignolet and Daniel Quasimodo.
Meetings will be held in Paris, between the
11 and the 16 August 1997, for the delivery of the 4 "flight" models of the
French Part to the Russian Part. The
Russian participants will be Victor Kurilov and Nicolas Bodine, of the
Russian Astronautical Federation, Hussein
Dikinov, Head of the Laboratory for Polytechnic Education in Naltchik,
Mikhail Balkizov, Minister of Education
and Science in the Republic of Kabardin-Balkar, Serguei Sambourov and
Serguei Vassiliev, of RKK Energia and
Nathalie Pottier of MAI. The French participants will be Jean-Paul Marodon,
of College Reydellet, Gerard Auvray
of RACE, Daniel Quasimodo of Saint Denis' Media Center, Guy Pignolet,
Georges Ballini and Audouin Dollfus of
Aero-Club de France. Meetings will be held at FAI and at Aero-Club de
France. Final integration work and
technical testing will be made in Gerard Auvray's laboratory. Environment
testing will be made later in Moscow by
RKK Energia.
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N°8 SPUTNIK 40 YEARS UPDATE
Monday 23 June 1997
17 June 1997 :
on French national pay channel Canal +, Jerome Bonaldi shows
for five minutes, with some emotion, the prototype model which has been
built by Gerard Auvray, and he broadcasts a call for sponsors.
18 June 1997 :
presentation of the prototype model at the Paris Air Show, on
the occasion of the "Innovation Prize"
organised by Aero-Club de France.
19 June 1997 :
on French national radio France Inter, Guy Pignolet talks for
five minutes to present the Sputnik 40
Years program. He sends calls for testimonies and for Sponsors.
20 June 1997 :
more than 700 calls have been distributed by Georges Ballini
to Exhibitors at the Paris Air Show.
23 June 1997 :
electronics components are sent to La Reunion for the
fabrication of the flight models by the students of College Reydellet. The
components were taken in the same series as the components used in the
spacecraft industry.. Only they are not guaranteed, because the costs would
be some 100 times higher, with 6 to 9 month delays. They are the same
components which were used in all the microsats of UOSAT or ARSENE type.
Care is taken that they do not make any outgassing.
25 June 1997 :
recording of "Paris lumieres" for the satellite TV5 channel.
Broadcasting is scheduled in the evening of Monday 7 July 1997, from 19h00
to 19h30, with : Sputnik 40 Years, Solar Sails, and Wireless Power
Transportation. You may also consult WEB sites at .."
http://www.oceanes.fr/~fr5fc/spoutnik.html" for Sputnik,
"http://www.ec-lille.fr/~u3p" for solar sails, and
"http://www.ac-grenoble.fr/yre" for the FEEE (Federation pour
l'Education à l'Environnement en Europe) report on microwave wireless Power
Transportation.
BLANK PAGES :
there will be no weekly on the 30 June, nor on the 7 July,
because of seminars and other various
activities. Next issue on the 14 July 1997. Think of asking for testimonies
and memories concerning the 4 October
1957, and think of asking potential sponsors to call for the 40 candles of
Sputnik.
19 June 1997 :
comments of Marc Zirnheld on the importance of symbols.
The efforts made to send men on the Moon before 1970 were greatly
motivated by a spirit of
challenge and conquest, this should not be hidden (I include thereby the
Russian competition). However, the human and scientific results have
reached beyond any limits, but these results were in the long term, and not
seed after : development of electronics and components, increase in
fiability and theoretical understanding thereof, astronautical research and
progress in the domain of satellites which bring today satellite
communications, geodesy, meteorology, observation and monitoring of our
planet...
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N°7 SPUTNIK 40 YEARS UPDATE
Monday 16 June 1997
10 June 1997 :
the "bip-bip" radio beacon has been tested by Gérard Auvray
at -20°C for one hour without problems.
10 June 1997 :
SAFT, the French battery manufacturer proposes LSH20 lithium
batteries. They are vacuum tight, and use for balloon payloads by CNES, at
attitudes up to 40 000 meters
15 June 1997 :
opening of Le Bourget Paris Air Show. Aéro-Club de France has
a "Sputnik 40 Years" box in the Press Room; where we have displayed the
"call for witnesses" of Sputnik-1 for the journalists. Hundreds of other
copies have been distributed to exhibitors, with a remainder of the call for
sponsors.
THE GREAT BOOK OF SPUTNIK :
A world-wide call is made on the occasion of the 1997 Paris Air Show, for
individual testimonies on the launch of the first artificial satellite of
the Earth on the 4 October 1957.
* The manuscript will remain the joint property of Aéro-Club de France and
of the Astronautical Federation of Russia. It will include the complete list
of the 40 Sponsors for the 40 Years anniversary of Sputnik.
Were you born, on that day of the 4 October 1957, a major turning point in
the history of Mankind ?
... The tell your personal story on how you lived through that exceptional
day of the launching of the first artificial satellite of
Planet Earth.
... And whatever your age, write and tell us what importance you personally
give to the event, tell us how you feel concerned by it...
SPOUTNIK 40 ANS - AERO-CLUB DE FRANCE
6 rue Galilée - 75116 Paris - France
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N°6 SPUTNIK 40 YEARS UPDATE
Monday 9 June 1997
BLANK PAGE:
there was no N° on the 2 June 1997. Not because of the
elections in France, but because of the
ordinary workload, and because we sent in the mail a few hundred more calls
to potential sponsors.
27 May 1997 :
telephone meeting between Jean-Paul Marodon and Hussein
Dikinov : work is in progress on both
sides, but the absence of reliable means of communication makes the
coordination difficult for the evolutions of the
interface.
30 May 1997 :
the LOGO CONTEST for Sputnik 40 years was put on the web. It
is open until the 15 June 1997 :
2 June 1997 :
conversation with the Minister of Education and Science of the
Republic of Kabardin-Balkar. He
thinks he will come to Paris, and maybe extend his trip to La Reunion for
one week, but the dates for the trip are
not clear yet. The Russian Embassy in Paris appears to have no information
yet about the 'Kabardin-Balkar Days'
which were mentioned during the trip in Naltchik in April 1997.
3 June 1997 :
a fax was successfully sent to Naltchik, using the number of
the Central Post Office, by manual
connection with 00 7 866 22 7 02 38 (working hours) or 00 7 866 22 7 02 47
(night time). The ' to ' name and
telephone number should be mentioned on the cover page, and the operators of
the Central Post Office will call the
person who will come to retrieve the message.
4 June 1997 :
telephone meeting between Jean-Paul Marodon and Victor
Kurilov. A technical coordination meeting
is scheduled in Paris in the third week of July 1997 to verify the good
compatibility between the mechanical part
and the electronic part, and to prepare the mission for the final
integration which should take place in Moscow. It
has been decide to have a weekly meeting from now on.
4 June 1997 :
successful launch of satellite INMARSAT-3F4 by Ariane V-97.
INMARSAT headquarters have been
contacted in London. They will consider the possibility of loaning "
satellite communication suitcases ' for the
teams in Naltchik and Saint-Denis de La Réunion.
5 June 1997 :
meeting at the Aero-Club de France with Audouin Dollfus,
Georges Ballini and Guy Pignolet.
Sponsor update : following the calls which were mailed, several potential
sponsors have told that they are
considering their participation. Preparation for the Paris Air Show : a
document will be distributed to the Press and
to the Exhibitors, it will remind of the call for sponsors, and will
announce the call for public testimonies on
Sputnik-1.
6 June 1997 :
technical information : the satellite will transmit in the 145
MHz band, using a frequency which has
been cleared when satellite Oscar 13 ended its operation. Output power will
be 130 mW, with a current drain of 48
mA under 12 V.
7 June 1997 :
meeting with Gerard Auvray, who participates in the design and
development of the Sputnik 40
Years transmitter. Test for the final prototype model (N°5) were made, with
wonderful 'beep-beep's. The students at
Reydellet High School will soon begin assembling the electronic boards.
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N°5 SPUTNIK 40 YEARS UPDATE
Thursday 29 May 1997
15 May 1997 :
meeting of the radioamateur group - 3 prototype beacons have
already been built, with AM primary modulation, which is then FM coded. A
4th prototype beacon is under construction, with direct FM modulation, which
will save on the energy of the batteries. With this system, the beacon
should be able to operate for about two months.
20 May 1997 : an officer from the French Intelligence Services (DST) called
us to warn that our friend Victor Afanassiev, former first secretary of the
Russian Embassy in Paris, is a colonel of KGB.. the contrary would have been
more surprising. On the subject of science and "intelligence", there is a
quite readable chapter in the book "Cosmic Connection" which was writen in
the early seventies by astronomer Carl Sagan.
21 and 22 May 1997 : Georges Ballini, Nicole Doutre, Guy Pignolet, Marc Zirnheld and
Carolyn Wesley stuff two thousand envelopes to send a call to prospective sponsors.
26 mai 1997 : Baptiste Marcel, of engineering school ENSEEIHT in Toulouse
(marcel@len7.enseeiht.fr), is worried of the possibility of a collision of
the satellite with station MIR after a few orbits : " once released, the
model will ride an orbit following the laws of Kepler, (with a period close
to 90 minutes. This means that 1h30m later the space station and the
satellite will find themselves again at the same spot in space.
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N°4 SPUTNIK 40 YEARS UPDATE
19 May 1997
12 May 1997 :
Audouin Dollfus wrote a great page of litterrature for the
call to sponsors.
16 May 1997 :
Georges Ballini, Guy Pignolet and Jean-Daniel Lan Sun Luk
prepare the mailing of the call towards 2 000 first level prospects, asking
them to forward the call towards a second set of prospects : 500 in French
only, 700 in English only, and 800 in French and English. After the second
level mailings, we expect that between twenty and fifty thousand persons
around the whole world will have received the call. We need 40 replies...
18 May 1997 :
the technical advancement is OK; we had assistance from Gerard
Auvray of AMSAT France; the
plans are to put 12 batteries in the satellite, the quartz is being ordered,
and the antenna coupling study is under way. The "CB Magazine" review will
publish the call in it's June issue. The magazine "Megahertz" will make an
announcement in June and a special issue in July ...
TEXT OF THE CALL TO SPONSORS
A) Text of Audouin Dollfus, Astronomer, Aeronaut
Member of the Board of Aero-Club de France
SPUTNIK IS 40 YEARS
40 sponsors for the 40 years of Sputnik
CherDear Colleague,
Sponsoring the "Sputnik 40 Years program is :
- the Sputnik 40 Years Project is wonderful : 40 years after
Sputnik-1, a scale model of the original satellite will be launched by hand
in space. The model is essentially built by students, it will "beep-beep"
like its ancestor. It's beautiful, it's emotion, it's great ! The technical
project is well under way : thanks to the drive and good will (a voluntary
activity) of the builders, also thank to some little financial help from
local sponsors, the satellite, just a metal shell with a radio beacon
powered by batteries, will be completed without major difficulties.
Launching it into space is a much bigger question that calls for the
professionalism and the big facilities of RKK Energia, with their launchers
and their MIR orbital station : it seems difficult, under the present
economic situation, to do anything else than paying the price for the service.
- Aéro-Club de France, nor the Astronautical Federation of Russia, do
not have operational funds : we must therefore call to the well understood
cooperation of those who have the means and the motivation to participate.
It is a beautiful endeavour to commemorate the major event which was a
surprise for the world and which impressed everyone who experienced it on
the 4 October 1957. We did not wish to have a single sponsor because Sputnik
belongs to all Mankind : we thought that 40 sponsors would be representative
of this spirit of universality while each one would still remain visible, a
visibility which will be expressed in the great book of the witnesses of
Sputnik. 40 shares at 30 000 French Francs or 6 000 $ US will cover the
launching costs and associated expenses : it is much and little at the same
time, it should not be a problem for many institutions, business, or even
private persons (a share in Sputnik 40 Years is a jewel for the inner garden).
- can help in three ways :
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40 SPONSORS
FOR THE 40 YEARS OF SPUTNIK
To celebrate the 40th anniversary of our coming of space age, Russian and
French high school children are building together the first scale model
satellite. Its mission : to transmit commemorative "beep-beep"s as a
reminder that 40 years ago, Sputnik-1 was the first object to be sent in
orbit around the Earth...
will have a diameter of 18 cm, a total mass of 4 kg, and it will transmit
characteristic beep-beep's in the radio-
amateur bands. The French students are assembling the electronic part of the
active model, while the Russian
students are building the external shell of the active model.
... are the builders : the young students of the Laboratory for Polytechnic
Education in Naltchik, in the Russian
Caucasus, and the students of the Radio-Club of Reydellet High School in
Saint Denis de La Reunion.
* the construction of the little satellite is managed in its own way by a
call to the available resources in the regional environment of the builders.
Only the first 40 Sponsors will have rights to the title of " Sponsor of
Sputnik 40 Years ".
A world-wide call will be made on the occasion of the 1997 Paris Air Show,
for individual
testimonies on the launch of the first artificial satellite of the Earth on
the 4 October 1957.
The manuscript will remain the joint property of Aéro-Club de France and
of the Astronautical
Federation of Russia. It will include the complete list of the 40 Sponsors
for the 40 Years anniversary
of Sputnik.
The Astronautical Federation of Russia and Aero-Club de France have decided
to establish jointly an International Fund called "Youth for Space", to
promote space education activities for the youth of the whole world. The
"Sputnik 40 Years" project is the first program of the International Fund to
be established soon in Moscow. The International Fund will be jointly
operated by the Astronautical Federation of Russia and by Aero-Club de
France. When the International Fund will be effectively in operation, the
assets of the special account opened in Moscow by the Astronautical
Federation of Russia within the frame of the "Sputnik 40 Years" project will
be transferred to the International Fund, as well as the possibly remaining
funds in the dedicated account open in Paris by Aero-Club de France, after
the launch costs will have been paid for Sputnik 40 Year.
At Aero-Club de France :
Prof. Audouin DOLLFUS,
At the Astronautical Federation of Russia :
Administrator of Aero-Club de France
6 rue Galilee - 75116 Paris - France
fax : +33 1 47 23 72 31 or +33 1 44 76 79 59
e-mail : "Spoutnik 40"
Prof. Victor KOURILOV
National Commissar for Space Flights
3-e Proiezda Mariinoi Roscha, 40
Moscow 127018 - Russia
fax : +7 095 121 80 57
Forty years after Sputnik-1,
space has become the new ground
for comprehensive activities, to the benefit of citizens and business of all
Mankind. In France,
http://www.ec-lille.fr/~U3P
http://www.oceanes.fr/~fr5fc/SPOUTNIK.html in English, in French, in Spanish
is visible on the WEB site http://www.oceanes.fr/~fr5fc/SPOUTNIK.html
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N°3 SPUTNIK 40 YEARS UPDATE
Monday 12 May 1997
BLANK PAGE :
there was no N° on the 31 March 1997, because I was in
Naltchik, and in the republic of
Kabardin-Balkar, e-mail is not yet the latest thing.
there was no N° on the 7 April 1997, because I spent the whole
night building a small model
that would look nice for the French National Scale Model Fair, and then I
had to struggle a week long before
the French Consulate in Moscow agreed to give visas for our Russian friends
to come to La Reunion...
there was a beginning of catch-up on the 14 April 1997 with a
report on the press conference
of the 27 march 1997, but it was jeopardized by last minute attempts to
correct the impossibility for Vladimir
Fyodorov to attend the La Reunion meeting.
there was no N° on the 21 April 1997, because we were day and
night busy with the La
Reunion IAF Seminar and with the work between Reydellet and the AFR
(Astronautical Federation of Russia).
there was no N° on the 28 April 1997, because there was a 20-cm
high pile of letters waiting
on my desk when I returned to my Paris office.
there was no N° on the 5 May 1997, because I spent a long
week-end, putting back in order
my communication systems to fully recover from the catastrophic computer
failure that I had endured on the 11
March 1997...
... therefore hereafter is a "weekly" update that covers 7 weeks in one shot !
joint Press Conference in Moscow and in Paris. In Paris, at
the headquarters of Aero-Club de
France, is Gerard Feldzer, President of Aero-Club de France, Audouin DOLLFUS, the astronomer, Georges
Ballini, the retired Air France pilot, and Colonel Robert Genty, former
President of CASAF (Astronautical
Commission of Aero-Club de France, with wife Ida Genty. Here are David
Haskal and Christine Arpin, of the
financial headquarters of La Poste, Charles Hochman, of the Carat
Advertising Spacce Agency, and Alain
Barrau, President of the French National Scale Model Fair. Here is Guy
Pignolet, Secretary of CASAF, Victor
Afanassiev of the Russian Embassy in Paris, on the go back to Moscow, and
replacement Victor Dorokhov. In
Moscow, at the Institute for Medico-Biological Problems, is Victor Kourilov,
National Commissar for
Spaceflight at the Astronautical Federation of Russia, and assistant Nicolas
Bodine. Here is Cosmonaut Valery
Polyakov, Deputy Director of the IMBP Institute, and Vladimir Syromiatnikov,
of RKK Energia. Here are Dr.
Mark Belakovskiy and Anatoliy Choulenine, of the Institute, and Hassan
Soukounov, Press Attache at the
Moscow Bureau of the Kabardin-Balkar Republic, Serguei Gerasioutine, Head of
the Space Department at the
Earth and Universe Magazine, Igor Makourine, of Inkom Bank, and Nathalie
Pottier, a French Student in the
Space Vehicle Design Department at the Moscow Aviation Institute.
the "40 Sponsors for the 40 Years of Sputnik" program is
presented, with its utmost simplicity
explained in a 8-page document : 40 "tickets" at $ 6 000 or "more" will be
offered world-wide to support the
project. The $ 6 000 of each sponsor will be received on a bank account
opened in France by AeCF. They will
be used for the basic operations of the project (launching the 4 kg of
Sputnik 40 Years and covering the
associated activities). After the payment of each exclusive funding
contribution (the number will be limited to
40), an amount of $ 4 000 will be transferred to a special account,
dedicated for the payment of the launch of
the satellite towards the MIR Orbital Station and for the connected
operations.
during the conference, there was a moment of emotion when
Colonel Robert Genty, former
Unique Judge of Space Records for FAI had a conversation with Valery
Polyakov, world recordman of space
flight duration with a grand total of 678 days in orbit, including 437 days
in a row from the 1st January 1994
till the 22 March 1995. For Gerard Feldzer, President of Aero-Club de
France, Sputnik 40 Years must convey a
message of hope for the youth. Audouin Dollfus reminded that on the 4
October 1957, Sputnik-1 had been a
"surprise" for everyone, in the whole world. Victor Kourilov announced that
the final assembly and tests would
take place in Moscow at RKK Energia.
AFP France Presse Agency releases a presentation of the "40
Sponsors for the 40 Years of
Sputnik" program.
SPECIAL : TRAVELLING TO NALTCHIK
29 March 1997 (Saturday) :
Georges Ballini and Guy Pignolet take off on a
mission with the AFR
(Astronautical Federation of Russia) and the Laboratory for Polytechnic
Education in Naltchik. Arrival in
Moscow in the snow and welcome by Victor Kourilov, Constantin Karp, Nathalie
Pottier and Andre Smakhtine
of MAI. A short stop at Moscow's central airport for the airline tickets to
Naltchik, with a 10-minute delay due
to a breakdown of the computer link between Moscow and Naltchik : even from
Moscow, communication with
Naltchik is not easy. Most often it is still manual (operator, 1970 style).
Then we go and leave our luggage at
hotel Rossia, and later we go to a restaurant where we are joined by
Engineer Vladimir Syromiatnikov and wife
Svetlana (they had been in La Reunion in 1993 to participate in the regional
science fair). Victor Kourilov
announces that he is a member of the Rotary Club in Moscow.
Nathalie Pottier reveals the greatest secret of space
construction, which she had learned from
masters at the Moscow Aviation Institute : "a rocket must be SIMPLE, this is
the first condition for it to work
properly..."
hotel Rossia remains the large bloc building with
the thousands of rooms, with the
lady with the keys at each floor, and with the need for an official
authorisation to take visitors to the rooms.
Telephone contacts are made with cosmonaut Jean-Pierre Haignere, at Star
City, and with cosmonaut
Alexandre Serebrov. In 1993, Alexandre Serebrov had launched, by hand, the
first model made by the students
in Naltchik, a scale model of Tsiolkovsky's rocket. Alexandre Serebrov and
wife Ekaterina accept to come to La
Reunion to meet the students of Reydellet High School.
departure from Moscow's domestic airport, with Nicolas
Bodine, on board of a YAK-42
aircraft. 1n 1957, Georges Ballini, an airline pilot, had landed at this
Domodedovo airport for the inaugural Air
France flight between Paris and Moscow. We arrive in Naltchik after 2 1/2
hours of flight and a view of Mount
Elbrous, the highest mountain in Europe, with 5640 m. Surprise ! we land at
Naltchik itself on an international
airport THAT WAS NOT REPORTED on the official IGN - Marco Polo Map which we
had bought in Paris.
As we exit the airport, taximen rush upon us : "taxi for Grozny, taxi for
Grozny..."; we were told that "all kinds
of persons" transit through Naltchik to access Tchetchenia, 200 km away.
welcome by Hussein Mussabivitch Dikinov, Director of the
Laboratory for Polytechnic
Education in Naltchik (the school) and his team. Installation in a hotel, a
former health residence for
communist party staff. We are told not to drink water from the tap. Diner at
the school's restaurant, with toast
and vodka at each course. Night excursion to a hill with a giant statue (a
hundred feet ?) of the regional version
of Prometheus (who took fire from the gods). A splendid sight of the
Hale-Bopp comet. Back to the room and
exploring the radio waves : there is no FM radio station in Naltchik.
breakfast at the school, then official visit to the
Minister of Education of the
Republic of Kabardin-Balkar, Mikhail Balkirov, and his deputy, Anatoli
Charonanov. Miracle in the office of
Anatoli Charonanov when, for the first time, a fax can be sent from Naltchik
and La Reunion. M. Balkirov says
that he will be in Paris in June for a "Kabardin-Balkar Week". (Might it be
possible to envision an extension to
La Reunion to meet his "counterpart", the Rector of La Reunion ?)
visit at the school and meeting with the Russian team
responsible for the construction of
Sputnik 40 Years. Here are a dozen students and teachers (including the
young Roman Pluginkov who was in
the Paris delegation on the 20 December 1996). A ceremony for two old-timers
who had participated in the
creation of Baikonur. Then a presentation of the Sputnik 40 Years project
and work meeting for the definition
of the technical interface between the two parts.: the mechanical part will
be made in two parts with an inside
diameter of 18 cm and the radio part will be contained in a cylinder with an
external diameter of 11 cm and a
length of 14 cm; both parts will be assembled together along a ring surface
at one end of the cylinder.
visit of the school, with the traditional costume workshop,
aircraft modelling, school museum,
mechanical workshop (good equipment, but "from the 70's"), the computer room
(PC with Windows and
CDROM). An external fax-modem brought from France is installed, without
success in connecting, in spite of
the telephone support from Kirill Simon, from Moscow : it's old time
telephone for long distance calls, with a
manual call through an operator who calls back some ten minutes later to
give the line. Hard time for faxes and
for Internet. It seems that there are some possibilities of "good" lines,
but they are expensive. Seemingly, there
is a "direct" line from the office of the director, with a fax, but the
attempts at calling La Reunion or other
regions of France are in vain.
diner at the school, with "tradition and culture". Special
bread and a delicious broth. Toast
and vodka every 10 minutes. At the end of the meal, the master of the table
shares a half-head of a mutton : the
eye for the youngest so he may see all, the nose to the guest on his left so
he may "smell" all, the ear to the
guest on his right so he may hear all, and the brains for the master of the
table himself so he may understand
all.
in the gymnastic hall of the school, students give us a very
nice demonstration of Karate. The
practice of Karate is compulsory, considered as essential for education. At
the same time at 20 hours, same
local time in La Reunion and Naltchik, there has been a radioamateur link
with Jean-Paul Marodon. We listen
to the recording in the office of Hussein Dikinov, we have to listen hard,
but the message gets through.
touristic excursion in the region of the Elbrous, with a
departure from the hotel at half past
seven and breakfast at the school. Police road blocks as we exit Naltchik
and when we enter Tourniaz. Snack
and beer in the snow at the foot of the Chibets ski resort, with an officer
of the Plessek space base who is here
on a ski vacation. Climbing to an altitude of 2400 m and view on the
Elbrous, which means "the breasts". With
some imagination, we can see two breast-shaped summits, with their tits
pointing to the sky...
returning down in the valley and visiting a technical high
school in Tourniaz. Welcome with
traditional dances by the students. Everything which is art and body
expression is here an integral part of
learning, just as language, mathematics or science. There are some
computers, early eighties generation, but
advanced computers are not perceived as a must : playing with large
quantities of information is not the most
important, we are told : what matters is good comprehensive understanding,
how the world is made, how we
live, and to have this well integrated in the heads of the students... " .
in the 80's, after perestroika, some Americans businessmen
came to the Tourniaz valley, asking
for mining rights on the re-use (gigantic artificial hills) of molybdenum
and tungsten ore. In exchange, they
offered to build a "free" railway. The government of Kabardin-Balkar said no
thanks.
after a breakfast at the school, we visited the University
in Naltchik. We met with three
teachers of French language and their 20 students (17 girls and 3 boys).
Most of them had difficulties with their
parents (why did you take up French ?) and the teachers, with great courage,
have to fight to maintain French
on the curriculum. Great success for the 10-minutes video "Spoutnik 40 Ans"
made by the video workshop of
Reydellet High School. One of the Naltchik teachers spent three years in
Paris in the 70's, preparing a PhD
thesis on Caucasian languages. He speaks Kabardinian and French, not
Russian. As we pass the front entrance
of the University, we see that most inscriptions are bilingual, Russian and
Kabardinian.
meeting with the Director of Foreign Affairs of the
University of Naltchik (5000 students in
Naltchik, plus 3000 other remote students on mail programs). On the business
card there is e-mail address
[ later, from Paris, I'll try to connect, without success : ----- The
following addresses had permanent fatal errors
-----
lunch at the school, chaired by Felix, the Deputy Director.
There are 120 teachers in the school,
including 4 "candidates" (top level)... The buildings are hardly bigger than
at Reydellet High School, but in
fact, it's a big education factory : there are 1 200 students proper, aged
12 to 18, in various programs with a 1, 2
or 3 years duration, leading to "certificates" or preparing for higher
education famous institutions, like MAI for
instance, the Moscow Aviation Institute. 4 000 other students belong to
other schools, they come here 2 times a
week for 2 hours to attend lectures. And 4 000 more students of other
schools in the city benefit from lectures
by teachers of the Laboratory for Polytechnic Education when the teachers go
and visit them in their own
schools for lectures or supervision. Hussein Dikinov, Director of the school
and the hierarchical superior of
professor Vladimir Fyodorov, is a former submarine commander.
as lunch finishes, we are joined by the professor in charge
of Karate education in the school. He
just returns from Copenhagen, where he won a bronze medal in the 1997 world
championship.
from the office of Hussein Dikinov, we make telephone
contact with Francois Bellino, who
represents the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Caucasian region.
Bellino has an office in Krasnodar,
at the west end of the mountains, one night away by train. He came once to
the University of Naltchik a few
weeks before us. This morning it was only the second time that the
University students had met with "real"
Frenchmen. Francois Bellino has an assistant, she may come from time to time
to Naltchik.
in the afternoon, we visit a kindergarten, which receives
"guidance" from the school. The kids
"breathe" in the world of space activities since they were 2 years old. They
do things which are similar to
experimental activities which were conducted in some schools in the south of
France at the end of the 80's.
the diner is chaired by Soltan, the Technical Director of
the school. Soltan "can cope" with the
Russian language, but he is more expressive, more comfortable when he speaks
Kabardinian.
evening meeting at Anatoli "Tolik"s, a bank manager, also a
radioamateur. New miracle of the
radio waves : at 20 hours, the connection with La Reunion and Jean-Paul
Marodon is established for a small
chat. Third major meal of the day, with Tolik's family. The world of
radioamateurs is a wonderful word.
in the hotel, at 2 a.m. , before going to sleep, Nicolas
Bodine and Guy Pignolet make the final
preparation of the text and drawings for the interface protocol for Sputnik
40 Years.
breakfast with our guests at the school. Toasts and vodka.
Car drivers put plain water in their
little glasses, has the same color.
in the office of Hussein Dikinov, we exchange gifts, the
video cassettes from Reydellet, songs
from La Reunion and Bourbon vanilla on one side, a large painting of Mount
Elbrous, carved metal plates and
mountain horns on the other side. Four hands sign the technical interface
protocol for Sputnik 40 Years.
Cameras click for the souvenir photos.
at the Naltchik airport, we all say good-bye. Boarding the
YAK-42. Running the engines, then
the engines stop. There is a problem. Maybe the plane will leave at 3 p.m. .
At 1 p.m., the plane will not leave
any more, we have to wait for the evening plane to take us to Moscow. Most
passengers disembark et return
home. Our little space party has nothing else to do, we stay on board and,
while the technicians get busy in the
engine section, we have a long conversation with the pilot and the commander
of the airport.
in the evening, we arrive in Moscow, where Victor Kurilov
and Nicolas Bodine take us to an
apartment for the night. On the next day, we take the first Air France
Flight and return to Paris.
after a sleepless night assembling and gluing together a
(static) model of the (functional) scale
model of Sputnik-1, the model is ready for presentation at the Paris
Exhibition Parc at Porte de Versailles, in
Paris. The model of Sputnik 40 Years has been invited at the Model and Scale
Model French National Fair by
the President of the Fair, Alain Barrau. The model was hosted by the French
Federation for Scale Modelling
during the whole week of the national exhibit.
opening of a specific Internet site for Sputnik 40 Years :
http://www.oceanes.fr/~fr5fc/spoutnik.html
top of a world contest for the logo of Sputnik 40
Years (details on the web).
official reception at the Aero-Club de France in Paris :
President Gerard Feldzer welcomes
Victor Kurilov, Nicolas Bodine, in the presence of Audouin Dollfus, Guy
Pignolet, and Max Bishop, General
Secretary of the Federation Aeronautique Internationale FAI.
Victor Kurilov and Nicolas Bodine join the party of twenty
space educators on their way to La
Reunion for the 7th Seminar on the Future of Space Education, which is
organised by the International
Astronautical Federation IAF. The kick-off party is organised by CNARM, the
House of La Reunion in Paris,
with punch and Creole dance demonstration.
welcome of the IAF delegation by the Reunion Tourism
Committee. The official party is
organised by the city of Saint Denis de La Reunion. The Sputnik 40 Years
program is presented, with the
participation of many officials, especially from the world of education, and
the exceptional participation of
cosmonaut Alexandre Serebrov.
diner at the Reydellet High School, with all the partners of
the project, and delivery of the gifts
offered by the Naltchik School.
AFR and Radio-Club Reydellet meet all afternoon in
Sainte-Rose to work out a detailed
technical definition of the plans for the Sputnik 40 Years satellite.
Nathalie Pottier, of MAI, does the technical
translation between Russian and French.
technical work is continued at the Reydellet High School in
Saint Denis. At 14:30, an official
reception takes place at the Palace of the Regional Council. The Elbrous
painting is offered to the Vice-
President of Region Reunion.
Victor Kurilov, Nicolas Bodine, Nathalie Pottier and Jean
Paul Marodon present the Sputnik
40 Years program at the Rotary Club in Saint Denis.
cosmonaut Alexandre Serebrov, Victor Kourilov, Hans von
Muldau (President of the Education
Committee of the IAF) and Guy Pignolet are officially received by Robert
Pommies, the Prefect of La Reunion,
in the presence of Jean-Claude Pieribattesti, the regional delegate of the
French Ministry of Research and
Technology.
meeting between Audouin Dollfus and Guy Pignolet for the
preparation of the funding
campaign "40 sponsors".
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N°2 SPUTNIK 40 YEARS UPDATE
Monday 24 March 1997
there was no N° on the 17 March 1997, because the portable
computer on which I work had
the bad idea to fail (power system breakdown) while I was on a mission with
the Young Reporters for the
Environment (Wireless Power Transportation and future power stations in
orbit). No information was lost, but
it took the time to return to my Paris office to scotch the pieces together.
the Astronautical Federation of Russia (AFR) has sent an
invitation to Aero-Club de France
(AeCF) for Georges Ballini and Guy Pignolet to make a technical visit in
Naltchik between the 30 March and
the 3 April 1997.
during a meeting between AFR and AeCF, the program "40
sponsors for the 40 Years of
Sputnik is accepted and a press conference will be organised simultaneously
in Paris and in Moscow on the 27
March 1997. The press conference will be at 3 p.m. local time in Paris and 5
p.m. local time in Moscow.
the AFR has sent AeCF a draft of 11 pages for the protocol
for the creation of the
International Fund Youth for Space. It is a long term cooperation program,
where Sputnik 40 Years is the first
project. This proposition will be studied in detail by AeCF and the final
agreement should be signed within a
few weeks. Considering the short delays, the 40 Sponsors program has been
organised, for the "essential" part
in a way which is not dependent on the creation of the Fund.
release of the 10-minute film which has been made (in French
and in English) by the audio-
visual workshop of Reydellet High-School for the promotion of Sputnik 40 Years.
Radio-Club Reydellet succeeds (with some difficulty) a
radioamateur with the radio club of the
Laboratory for Polytechnic Education in Naltchik and it was possible to
speak with the young Roman
Plouginkov (who was in Paris on the 20 December 1996).
the professional lithium batteries Sonnenschein SL780, with
a capacity of 13 Ah and a mass
of 100 grammes have been identified as being possibly the most efficient and
best suitable for the speciific
needs of the small Sputnik 40 Years satellite.
twelve radioamateurs meet at ORSTOM in Saint-Denis de La
Reunion to discuss various
options for the construction of the radio module.
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N°1 SPUTNIK 40 YEARS UPDATE
Monday 10 March 1997
It has been forty years already since we entered space age ! Would you
believe it ? There may be a need for a
small reminder : the Astronautical Federation of Russia, in cooperation with
Aero-Club de France, has decided
to make a world event around the launch, in space, of a functional scale
model of Sputnik-1. It will be made in
cooperation by students in Naltchik, in the Russian Republic of
Kabardin-Balkar, and by French students in a
high school in Saint Denis de La Reunion. Each Monday, we shall keep you
informed (in French) of the rapid
progress of the project, by e-mail or fax. There will be an English version
each Thursday.
original meeting in Paris. Victor Kurilov and Nicolas
Bodine of the Astronautical
Federation of Russia, and Vladimir Fyodorov, of the Laboratory for
Polytechnic Education in Naltchik, in the
presence of Victor Afanassiev, First Secretary of the Embassy of Russia in
Paris, make an offer to associate
with France to buid a scale model of Sputnik-1. On the same day, the
Reydellet High School, headed by Jean-
Paul Marodon, is selected to be the French partner of the Russian students.
Jean-Paul Marodon and Guy Pignolet write up the
presentation document for the
Sputnik 40 Years project.
Jean-Claude Prat, Headmaster of Lycee Charles De Gaulle
in Muret, offers the support of
his school to the Sputnik 40 Years project.
the Board of U3P, the Union for the Promotion of Photonic
Propulsion decides to support
the Sputnik 40 Years project.
Gerard Feldzer, President of Aero-Club de France, writes
to Victor Kurilov and announces
his decision to coordinate the project for the French part.
the decision is made to start officially the Sputnik 40
Years program, as well as a long term
cooperation between the Astronautical Federation of Russia and Aero-Club de
France. On the same day,
Georges Ballini, of AeCF, takes off for Moscow to organise the video
conference with La Reunion and to
represent AeCF at the protocol ceremony.
Craig Underwood, of Surrey Satellite Technology, in the
UK, announces the support of his
team to the Sputnik 40 Years project. Victor Afanassiev and Audouin
Dollfus, of Aero-Club de France, take off
for La Reunion to respectively represent the Russian part and AeCF. During
the night, Helva Payet, in Paris,
makes the French translation of the original protocol documents, written in
Russian language.
the protocols for the French-Russian cooperation in terms
of space education, on one hand, and for the Sputnik 40 Years project on the
other hand, are signed simultaneously in Moscow and in Saint-Denis de La
Reunion during a video conference organised by SEM Protel of Region Reunion.
In Moscow, we have Victor Kourilov and Nicolas Bodine of the Astronautical
Federation of Russia, Victor Fyodorov and
Hussein Dikinov, Director of the Laboratory for Polytechnic Education in
Naltchik, as well as cosmonaut
Valery Poliakhov, recordman of the longest time in space. France is
represented by Georges Ballini and by
cosmonaut Jean-Pierre Haignere, both of them delegates of AeCF. In Saint
Denis de La Reunion we have
astronomer Audouin Dollfus, representing AeCF, and Jean-Paul Marodon, Head
of Reydellet High School. We
have the students of the Radio-Club of Reydellet High School, and Daniel
Quasimodo, Director of the Francois
Mitterand House of Communication, who makes the translation for the
signature ceremony for the protocols
where both Russian and French languages are spoken.
Victor Hamon, Director of ESEO, an Electronic Engineering
School in Angers, France,
gives the support of his school for the Spoutnik 40 Years project.
CASAF, the Astronautic Commission of AeCF approves the
"40 Sponsors for the 40 years
of Sputnik" program to fund the launch of the scale model of Sputnik-1 in
space. CASAF also approves the
organisation of a world collection of testimonies for "Sputnik 40 Years", to
be announced to the media on the
occasion of the 1997 Paris Air Show.
Jacques Lenormand, Olivier de La Serre, David Hascal and
Christine Arpin, of La Poste, take
the decision to help the organisation for the funding of the Sputnik 40
Years project.
the "40 Sponsors for the 40 Years of Sputnik" is accepted by
the Russian part. A world-wide
call will be made to institutions, business, and private persons. The
organisation of the essential part (launching and associated activities) is
attributed to the French part. The organisation of additional promotion
activities is attributed to the Russian part. In the same time, and in
parallel, the Russian part and the French part will work towards the
establishment of the International Fund Youth for Space.
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