#orbital_laboratory

[phonemantra-blog]

The first module was Russian, launched from Baikonur The International Space Station project today, November 20, 2023, has a significant date - a quarter of a century of flight. The press service of Roscosmos spoke about this and shared interesting statistics in honor of the event. [caption id="attachment_83756" align="aligncenter" width="780"] Space Station[/caption] The first module of the International Space Station was launched into orbit on November 20, 1998 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on a Proton-K launch vehicle. It was the Zarya functional cargo unit created in Russia. On December 7, the Zarya module was docked with the American Unity hub module, delivered into space by the Endeavor shuttle (mission STS-88).  Since 2000, crews from different countries have been continuously working on the ISS. Currently, cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko, Nikolai Chub and Konstantin Borisov, as well as astronauts Jasmine Moghbeli, Loral O'Hara, Andreas Mogensen and Satoshi Furukawa are conducting scientific research and experiments at the station.  15 countries are participating in the ISS project: Russia, USA, Japan, Canada, Belgium, Great Britain, Germany, Denmark, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, France, Switzerland and Sweden. The International Space Station celebrates 25 years since its launch into space During the construction and operation of the ISS, 275 launches were carried out, 337 dockings and redockings of ships and modules were carried out, and 349 station orbit corrections were carried out. At the same time, 273 people from 21 countries visited the station: 59 Russians; 165 Americans; 11 Japanese; nine Canadians; five Italians; four French and four Germans each; two citizens of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates; one citizen each from Spain, South Africa, Belgium, the Netherlands, Brazil, Sweden, Malaysia, South Korea, Denmark, Kazakhstan, Great Britain and Israel. The leaders in the number of arrivals to the ISS are Russians Yuri Malenchenko, Fyodor Yurchikhin and Oleg Kononenko - five each. The longest stay at the station lasted 370 days 21 hours 22 minutes 16 seconds - this record is held by Sergei Prokopyev, Dmitry Petelin and the American Francisco Rubio. The crews performed 269 spacewalks, involving 154 people.

[phonemantra-blog]

In microgravity conditions it was possible to create quantum gas On board the ISS there is a combined laboratory designed to create the coldest substances in the Universe. This is the Cold Atom Laboratory, which gives scientists the opportunity to study the quantum properties of atoms in zero-gravity conditions. On November 15, scientists announced the achievement of an important result. Controlled remotely by a team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Cold Atom Laboratory created a quantum gas containing two kinds of atoms. This result opens up new possibilities for conducting space experiments in the field of quantum chemistry. [caption id="attachment_83199" align="aligncenter" width="650"] ISS[/caption] Matter can exist in five known states: gaseous, liquid, solid, plasma and Bose-Einstein condensate - an exotic fifth state of matter discovered in the 1990s. Bose-Einstein condensates do not occur in nature, but scientists can create them. This is done in ultra-cold laboratories, similar to the Cold Atom Laboratory, where lasers or magnets are used to cool a cloud of atoms to near absolute zero, which is −459.67°F (−273.15°C). In the Bose-Einstein condensate state, atoms slow down, allowing scientists to observe rare quantum effects. On Earth, gravity causes the Bose-Einstein condensate to collapse when the magnets or lasers needed to create it are turned off. However, this does not happen in microgravity conditions in space. In 2018, scientists were already able to create a Bose-Einstein condensate at the Cold Atom Laboratory after installation on the ISS. They have been researching this phenomenon in recent years. An exotic fifth state of matter with two types of atoms was created in a quantum chemistry experiment on the ISS Now researchers have been able to show that they can create such a quantum gas with not only one, but two types of atoms. To do this, they used pairs of potassium-rubidium atoms. Representatives from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said that further work with this type of quantum gas could be useful for the development of space quantum technologies already used on Earth. “It becomes possible to create extremely sensitive sensors and use cold atoms in the Bose-Einstein condensate to create gyroscopes. Such gyroscopes can serve as a fulcrum for space navigation in deep space. Also being considered are ideas leading to more accurate space clocks, which have important implications for areas such as high-speed Internet and GPS,” said Nicholas Bigelow, a professor of physics and optics at the University of Rochester, one of the co-authors of the discovery. The researchers hope that future experiments at the Cold Atom Laboratory will help test the equivalence principle, which is fundamental to Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity. According to this principle, gravity should affect all objects equally, regardless of their mass. Scientists have difficulty reconciling this principle with the laws of quantum mechanics, which describe the behavior of the smallest objects in the Universe. They hope that quantum experiments in space will make it possible to more accurately test this principle.