By IANS,
Moscow : Cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) will launch a mini-satellite during a spacewalk Aug 3 in honour of the 50th anniversary of Russian astronaut Yury Gagarin’s pioneering space flight, officials said Friday.
The mini-satellite, Kedr, is part of the Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) project, and is designed to transmit greeting messages in 15 languages and relay images of Earth and telemetry data to amateur radio operators as it orbits the Earth.
Its name comes from Russian cosmonaut Yury Gagarin’s call sign and it is being launched in honour of the 50th anniversary of Garagin’s flight.
Russian cosmonauts Alexander Samokutyaev and Sergei Volkov will launch Kedr manually during a six-hour spacewalk.
The Kedr was delivered to the ISS by a Russian cargo spacecraft, Progress M-09M, Jan 30.