OREANDA-NEWS. On September 22, 2015, the Roscosmos Space State Corporation and Lomonosov Moscow State University signed a contract on 5-year cooperation in educational activity.

The document implies that teams of MSU professors, students, PhD students, and employees of rocket and space industry organizations will have an opportunity to design university artificial satellites of Earth, as well as holding cooperative scientific and educational seminars and conferences, including creative contests and quizzes, aimed at searching for talented youth and popularizing space research.

The agreement was signed by head of the Roscosmos State Corporation Igor Komarov and MSU rector Victor Sadovnichy.

According to the document, the parties shall cooperate to improve the educational process in order to replenish the human, intellectual, and production and technology resources of the rocket and space industry and high school, as well as developing the international contacts of MSU and the Roscosmos State Corporation in space-centered education and university space research. The activity of the parties shall be coordinated by MSU Center for Intellectual Resources.

According to the agreement, the partners shall also solve certain research and technical and educational tasks, recruiting MSU employees, students, including PhD students, and experts of rocket and space industry organizations.

In particular, it concerns fundamental and applied space research, carrying out experiments on high precision polychromatic photometric observation of the starry sky from the ISS, testing high precision sensors of star orientation, studying biomedical and psychological issues of life support in deep space exploration, development of systems of people’s preparation for space flight conditions, including development of mathematical and software supply of space simulators, and other tasks.

MSU and Roscosmos are preparing for the launch of Lomonosov satellite from Vostochny cosmodrome. It is planned to carry out scientific experiments on transient light phenomena in the Earth’s upper atmosphere, radiation parameters of the Earth’s magnetosphere, and fundamental cosmological research using the spacecraft. With a special telescope, Lomonosov will measure the energy spectrum and the chemical composition of high energy space rays from the near-earth orbit. The equipment will allow the researchers to explore space gamma-ray bursts.