ZVEZDNY GORODOK, Moscow region. Oct 24 (Interfax-AVN) - The new crew of the International Space Station (ISS), which starts its mission from Baikonur on November 14, will position the Chibis research satellite from the spent Progress freighter, Soyuz-TMA-22 crew commander Anton Shkaplerov told a Monday press conference in Zvezdny Gorodok.
"After the Progress undocks from the ISS, it will climb by 100 kilometers and automatically launch the satellite at the altitude of 500 kilometers," he said.
The ISS crew will replace the Progress docking unit with the satellite container. "Our task is to install the container with high precision," he said.
When the research satellite is launched, the Progress will burn in dense layers of the atmosphere, he said.
Progress M-13M will bring Chibis-M to the ISS together with other cargo. The satellite will study atmospheric lightening.
The micro-satellite weighs about 40 kilograms, including 12 kilograms of the research payload. That would be the first ever study of thunders in different spectrums of electromagnetic waves.
The satellite carries an X-ray gamma detector, an ultra-violet detector, a radio frequency analyzer, an optical digital camera and a set of plasma wave instruments.
The Space Instrument Design Bureau of the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Tarusa, Kaluga region, will receive data from the satellite and control its flight.