Russia’s Nauka

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Part of: GS Prelims and GS -III – Space

In news Russia is sending the module, Nauka, to the ISS

Nauka was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on July 21 using a Proton rocket.
It is scheduled to be integrated with the ISS on July 29.

What is Nauka?

Nauka, meaning “science” in Russian, is the biggest space laboratory Russia has launched to date.
It will replace Pirs, a Russian module on the International Space Station (ISS) used as a docking port for spacecraft and as a door for cosmonauts to go out on spacewalks.
Now, Nauka will serve as the Russia’s main research facility on the space station.
Nauka is 42 feet long and weighs 20 tonnes.
It is also bringing to the ISS another oxygen generator, a spare bed, another toilet, and a robotic cargo crane built by the European Space Agency (ESA).

What is the International Space Station?

A space station is essentially a large spacecraft that remains in low-earth orbit for extended periods of time.
The ISS has been in space since 1998.
It is a result of cooperation between the five participating space agencies that run it: NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), JAXA (Japan), ESA (Europe), and CSA (Canada).
The ISS circles the Earth in roughly 93 minutes, completing 15.5 orbits per day.
The ISS serves as a microgravity and space environment research laboratory in which scientific experiments are conducted in astrobiology, astronomy, meteorology, physics, and other fields.

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