JULY 8,
2019
The
German-Russian observation system for animal movements, Icarus, will go into
operation on 10 July 2019. In the subsequent test phase, the Icarus engineers
and scientists will check the system components on the ground, on board the
International Space Station (ISS) and the transmitters that collect the
animals' data. After completion of all tests, Icarus is expected to be
available to the scientific community in autumn or winter 2019.
Icarus is
a cooperative project between the Russian space agency Roskosmos, the German
Aerospace Center (DLR), and the University of Konstanz under the leadership of
Martin Wikelski from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Constance.
With the space-based observation system, scientists want to find out more about
the life of animals on Earth: on which routes they migrate, under what
conditions they live and, above all, how they can best be protected.
The
researchers equip different animal species with miniature transmitters that
send their measurement data to a receiving station in space. The data is
transmitted to a ground
station, from where it is sent to the respective research teams. The
results are published in the Movebank database, which is freely accessible to
everyone, and in a counterpart developed by RKK Energia and the Institute of
Geography of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IG-RAS). The Icarus equipment
supports the Russian space research project Uragan (hurricane), which was
developed to adapt Earth observation hardware and methods and to observe
potentially dangerous phenomena. Uragan instruments are used to simultaneously
observe the Earth's surface to understand the migrations of animals and the
reasons for their changes.
Activation
of on-board computer
On 10
July 2019, the Russian ground control centre will activate the Icarus antenna
and the on-board computer on the ISS. The on-board computer is already on the
space station, the antenna was mounted by Russian cosmonauts on the outside of
the "Zvezda" module. At the same time, a SpaceTech test ground
station in Immenstaad will start operation.
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