SAMARA, December 21Scientists from the Samara National Research University named after Korolev have developed equipment that will be installed on board the Bion-M orbital laboratory No. 2 for testing extreme electronics, the university’s press service told reporters.
“The Carbon-2 scientific equipment has successfully completed the entire cycle of planned tests and is ready for installation on board the Bion-M spacecraft No. 2. The equipment is a kind of electronic test site. It will be located on the outside of the orbital laboratory, right in outer space, and prototypes of thin-film instrument structures based on silicon carbide will be fixed and activated in it,” said Lyubov Kurganskaya, leading researcher at the Research Institute for Modeling and Control Problems of Samara University.
These prototypes of electronic components will be exposed to various factors, including temperature changes, cosmic radiation, vacuum, and the equipment will maintain and evaluate the “performance” of the samples. The data obtained will help calculate the operating parameters of future semiconductor devices and devices based on silicon carbide under space flight conditions. Silicon carbide is second only to diamond and boron nitride in hardness; this semiconductor material is considered the most promising for use in electronics operating under extreme conditions.
Design and development tests of the Carbon-2 scientific equipment were carried out for about a month and a half. According to Kurganskaya, the electronic test site successfully passed the most stringent ground tests.
The final ground tests of the Carbon-2 scientific equipment as part of the assembled Bion-M No. 2 spacecraft are planned for January-March 2024.
“Bion” is a series of domestic spacecraft for conducting biological research; from 1973 to 1996, 11 satellites of this series were launched into space. The spacecraft contained single-celled organisms, plants, insects, fish, turtles, monkeys and other biological objects. In April 2013, the first modernized biological satellite “Bion-M” was launched with mice, gerbils, geckos, snails, crustaceans, fish and various microorganisms.
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