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Photo courtesy of Excalibur Almaz
Photo courtesy of Excalibur Almaz
Photo courtesy of Excalibur Almaz

Russian spacecraft coming to Israel

After two trips to space and two years before its planned return, the Almaz spacecraft is coming to Madatech in Haifa until the end of the year; it is intended to bring student and youths' experiments with it to space.

The guest of honor at the Space Festival in Haifa will be the Almaz spacecraft—part of the former USSR's space program—that will come to Madatech, Israel’s National Museum of Science, Technology, and Space. Its display will be part of a museum program to promote entrepreneurship and education for space exploration amongst youths and students.

 

 

The spacecraft, which belongs today to the private space tourism company Excalibur Almaz, was sent out of the atmosphere twice, first in 1977. In the course of a few years, she is intended to carry out civilian-commercial space flights, though she will remain in the Haifa museum until the end of the year.

 

The Almaz's journey to Israel, in an El Al transit plane, is part of a larger project intended to encourage educational activities surrounding space exploration and to call to youths and students to develop scientific and technological experiments that can be performed in low orbit. The project is a collaboration between the Heinlein Society (an international foundation that supports entrepreneurship to encourage civilian and commercial activity in space) and the Israeli Ramon Foundation.

 

A rendering of an Excalibur Almaz spacecraft (Courtesy of Excalibur Almaz) (Photo courtesy of Excalibur Almaz)
A rendering of an Excalibur Almaz spacecraft (Courtesy of Excalibur Almaz)

 

Within two years, with this collaboration, select youths will be able to send their experiments into space on the Russian spacecraft.

 

Art Dula, the trustee of the Heinlein Prize Trust and founder of Excalibur Almaz, said, "We are proud that our spacecraft, whose abilities have already been proven, will be able to help a project that perpetuates the memories of Ilan and Asaf Ramon. Most of the world's nations don't have a space program, and our international collaboration with the Ramon Foundation for space exploration, for civilian purposes and peaceful purposes, is a beginning for Israeli space flights."

 

The project will also bring to Israel the American astronaut Dr. Don Thomas; Dr. John Clark, an expert on medicine in space who also is the widower of American astronaut Dr. Laurel Clark, who died in the Columbia disaster along with Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon; and the heads of Excalibur Almaz.

 


פרסום ראשון: 06.22.16, 22:02
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