Open space experiments at WFY-2024
From March 1-6, a group of 10 participants in the children's educational program of the World Youth Festival 2024 conducted experiments on updating the probe in outer space at the Sirius Center.
Students from Russia, Gabon, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Egypt and the USA teamed up on the project. Boris Loginov from the Institute of Integrated Electronics became their scientific supervisor and mentor.
"The project to upgrade the probe in outer space has become a pioneering development to improve the operation of the second space probe microscope, which MIET is preparing for launch. The first SMM-2000 space microscope is already operating in space on the basis of the Nanoprobe-1 satellite and helps scientists conduct unique research directly in orbit. They can study in detail the impact of the space environment on the surface of spacecraft structures and obtain information about the amount of dust in orbits. However, when rare non-conductive particles of cosmic dust enter the microscope, the tip of its probe deteriorates. In the course of thinking about how to solve this problem, we at MIET had the idea to update the probe by covering it with a layer of metal sprayed from the side when heating a small spiral. Next came the question of choosing a spiral metal that would form the sharpest tip at the end of the probe during spraying, which is important for a microscope with high magnification," Boris Loginov notes.
During one week, the participants of the children's educational program conducted the necessary scientific research under the guidance of Boris Loginov. All students involved in the project "The world's first probe microscope — satellite of the Earth: an experiment to upgrade a probe in outer space" first mastered the work on SMM-2000 space scanning probe microscopes created at MIET and at the PROTON plant, as well as vacuum installations that are part of the nanotechnology complex of the educational and design class at the Sirius Educational Center. Further, they independently conducted numerous experiments to analyze the sharpness of the initial probes, on thermal emission spraying of six different metals and on the sharpness of probes with these metals.
Six metals were initially selected. They were the metals that showed the best results in spraying in near outer space during experiments carried out in the summer of 2023 as part of a similar project implemented by Boris Loginov and his students. As a result of the experiments conducted in March, three metals became the leaders: gold is the first one, zinc is the second, and the third is nickel.
"Of course, gold will be used in a real satellite, especially considering that the mirror that catches cosmic particles in the microscope is also gold," Boris Albertovich summarizes the result.
The results of the children's educational program were summed up on March 6 at the grand festival of projects at WFY-2024, where students and their mentors presented about a hundred studies that they worked on during that week.