The Russian company "Bureau 1440" has published a picture of the spacecraft of the "Dawn-2" mission, which, along with two similar satellites, was launched into orbit in May 2024. They were used to test technologies needed to create a future group (the so-called Russian Starlink).
The company explained that the satellites have been in orbit for 1.5 years, during which time they have made a total of over 25 thousand revolutions around the Earth. With their help, the developers conducted more than 1000 experiments.
For the picture, we used service cameras not intended for shooting at long distances, which we usually see on Earth remote sensing (ERS) vehicles.
Engineers from «Бюро 1440» brought the R2D1 and R2D2 vehicles, flying at a speed of 27 thousand km/h, to a distance of 800 m from each other. In this way, they tested the control systems for the movement and navigation of satellites.
When deploying a satellite constellation, it will be necessary to arrange them in a certain order, to divert them from collisions with space debris. Therefore, a precise control system is critical for the operation of spacecraft, summarized in «Бюро 1440».
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