Март 2023 г.

Российская наука и мир (по материалам зарубежной электронной прессы)

CONTENTS / ОГЛАВЛЕНИЕ


• Scientists discover fossils of oldest known potential pollinators
• "Prehistoric" mummified bear discovered in Siberian permafrost isn't what we thought
• Siberian scientists found and studied the most ancient diamond on Earth
• Historians study burial sites of the South Ural "Amazons"
• Will perovskite photovoltaics be toxic to us? The researchers broke their silence
• Researchers find decaying biomass in Arctic rivers fuels more carbon export than previously thought
• Russia returns to the Moon (maybe)
• KFU scientists partake in describing two new species of crustaceans from the Arctic
• Scientist reveals key objectives for lunar station project co-proposed by China, Russia
• 40 million year old wasp ancestor unearthed in amber
• Leaky Russian space capsule lands safely in Kazakhstan

Российские и польские палеонтологи обнаружили окаменелые останки древнейших насекомых-опылителей. Похожие на уховерток представители рода Tillyardembia возрастом 280 млн лет были найдены в горной породе Чекардинского месторождения на Урале. Насекомые питались пыльцой голосеменных растений, поскольку на момент их существования до появления цветковых растений оставалось еще около 100 млн лет.

Nearly 200m years before the mosquito in Jurassic Park became trapped in amber, hundreds of ancient insects were encased in sediment along the bank of the Sylva river that flows through the Urals.
Now, scientists inspecting the flattened creatures have found a handful that appear to mark a moment in history: they are the oldest known insects to be covered in pollen, and perhaps some of the world’s first plant pollinators.
Rare fossils of the earwig-like insects were discovered when palaeontologists cracked open rocks along the riverbank near the half-derelict village of Chekarda in Russia. At 280m years old, the specimens predate what were previously the earliest known pollen-covered insects by about 120m years.
Known as tillyardembiids, the fossilised insects had clumps of pollen on their heads, bodies and legs, which under a fluorescent microscope looked like Christmas baubles. The pollen was found to come from a narrow range of seed-producing, non-flowering plants called gymnosperms. Flowering plants evolved 250m to 150m years ago, but became far more common 100m years ago as the rise in pollinators helped transform the diversity of terrestrial life on Earth.
Writing in Biology Letters, the team from Russia and Poland concede it is impossible to know whether their ancient insects contributed to pollination in the Permian period, but suggest that by eating pollen - and covering themselves in the grains - the creatures were an "evolutionary precursor" to the mutually-beneficial arrangement.
"It was like touching the past," said Alexander Khramov, a senior researcher at the Paleontological Institute, Russian Academy of Science in Moscow, on seeing the fossils. "This discovery sheds light on the early evolution of insect pollination. It provides direct, smoking-gun evidence of pollen dispersion by Paleozoic insects. And we could say that tillyardembiids were picky eaters, specialised on a rather narrow range of host plants."
The Permian period covers the last 47m years of the Palaeozoic era, which spans 540m to 250m years ago. Many insects preserved in amber date to 100m years ago.
Tillyardembiids had wings and so were potentially highly effective at dispersing pollen, but whether the insects co-evolved with gymnosperms as the plants’ pollinators is likely to remain a mystery.
"We cannot go back in a time machine to observe whether these insects did pollination work or not. Even if they pollinated ancient gymnosperms all day round, there are no ways to prove it with certainty by means of palaeontology," Khramov said.
"Who knows, maybe they simply gobbled up pollen, and plants did not benefit from it? Anyway, what we could say for sure is that tillyardembiids visited quite a narrow range of plants and carried their pollen in large amounts. So I do not see why they could not have been pollinators," he added.
Charles Wellman, professor of palaeobiology at the University of Sheffield, said the majority of modern plants are insect pollinated. "How and when insect pollination began is a compelling question. This new fossil discovery suggests that insects had begun to steal plant pollen to eat millions of years before the process of pollination evolved. However, this eventually became an association of mutual benefit, as plants developed mechanisms to ensure that the thieves left with pollen attached, that fertilised neighbouring plants as they fed on them."
Barry Lomax, professor of plant palaeobiology a the University of Nottingham, said plant-insect interactions define the modern world, with pollinator services proving the backbone for much of our food production. The study, he said, provided evidence for the antiquity of the relationship, one that became established well before the evolution of flowers which likely occurred in the Cretaceous period about 135m years ago.
"By examining the type of pollen, the authors showed that it comes from just a handful of plant species, suggesting close association between the plants and these insects," Lomax said. "The exciting thing about this discovery is the fact that there appears to be a degree of specialisation in plant-insect interactions and that this specialisation predates flowering plants and it suggests the possibility that insect pollination predates flowers."

Хорошо сохранившаяся туша медведя, найденная в 2020 г. в вечной мерзлоте на Большом Ляховском острове (Новосибирский архипелаг), первоначально была определена как пещерный медведь возрастом около 22 тысяч лет. Новое исследование показало, что это не пещерный, а бурый медведь, причем гораздо моложе - «всего» 3,5 тысяч лет.

The bear, unearthed in 2020, was originally assumed to be an extinct cave bear that dated back at least 22,000 years. But a new necropsy reveals it is actually a brown bear that lived 3,500 years ago.
A perfectly preserved, mummified bear found entombed in the Siberian permafrost in 2020 isn't what scientists thought it was, a new analysis reveals. It turns out that the eerily intact carcass is much younger than first assumed and belongs to an entirely different species.
Reindeer herders unearthed the remains, which include the bear's intact skin, fur, teeth, nose, claws, body fat and internal organs, on Bolshoy Lyakhovsky Island, a remote Russian island located in the East Siberian Sea. Researchers named it the Etherican bear, after the nearby Bolshoy Etherican River.
When the Etherican bear was first uncovered, researchers at the Lazarev Mammoth Museum Laboratory at North-Eastern Federal University (NEFU) in Yakutsk, who have led the analysis of the remains, thought that the mummy was an extinct cave bear (Ursus spelaeus). Fossils of this long-lost species suggest that the enormous ancient bears, which are closely related to brown bears (Ursus arctos) and polar bears (Ursus maritimus), grew to around 11.5 feet (3.5 meters) tall and weighed a whopping 3,300 pounds (1,500 kilograms). U. spelaeus went extinct around 22,000 years ago, toward the end of the Last Glacial Maximum, the coldest part of the last ice age, so the researchers believed that the mummy was at least this old.
However, subsequent analysis revealed that their assumptions about the Etherican bear were way off: In reality, the beast was a brown bear that dated to around 3,460 years ago, the NEFU team said in a statement in December 2022.
The NEFU team recently conducted a full necropsy, or animal autopsy, on the Etherican bear, which has revealed even more about the mysterious mummy, Reuters reported.
The bear was a female that was 5.2 feet (1.6 m) tall and weighed around 172 pounds (78 kg), suggesting it was likely around 2 to 3 years old when it died. It is unclear how the bear perished, but its mummy showed signs of significant spinal injuries that likely contributed to its demise.
The Etherican bear was so well preserved that its stomach contents were still partly intact, which revealed that the bear had been dining on a mix of unidentified plants and birds, some of whose feathers were still inside the bear's belly. This fits with what we know about living brown bears that are omnivores, meaning they have a mixed diet of plants and animals.
The researchers also removed the bear's brain after cutting through its skull, which they hope to study in the future.
One of the biggest remaining mysteries about the Etherican bear is how it ended up on Bolshoy Lyakhovsky Island.
The island is currently separated from the mainland by around 31 miles (50 kilometers) of water, so the most likely explanation is that brown bears moved to the island when it was still connected by sea ice during the Last Glacial Maximum, according to Reuters. But if this was the case, then researchers would have expected to find many more brown bear remains on the island, which is a hotspot for paleontological treasures, including mammoth remains.

Алмаз, обнаруженный сибирскими геологами в образцах из якутского месторождения, является, вероятно, самым древним из известных: его возраст составляет около 3,6 млрд лет. Алмазное вкрапление диаметром 0,3 мм в зерне оливина из кимберлитовой трубки кристаллизовалось, предположительно, из углеродсодержащего силикатного или сульфидного расплава при температуре 1400-1600 °С.

As part of an international team of researchers, Siberian scientists have been involved in studying a diamond that was found in Yakutia in the Republic of Sakha. The stone is believed to be approximately 3.6 billion years old, according to the latest publication of ‘Science in Siberia‘ from the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
It specified that the jewel was found in the rocks of the Udachnaya kimberlite pipe, which is one of the largest diamond deposits in Russia. Samples of rocks and minerals of the lithospheric mantle brought to the Earth’s surface in this region have been of interest to Russian and foreign scientists since the late 1960s, as reported by ria.ru.
For more than half a century, geologists have been collecting and studying diamonds that were brought from depths of up to 250km millions of years ago. In one of these collections, a sample unique in age and education was found, an article about which was published in the authoritative journal Minerals.
"The diamond we discovered is apparently the oldest one studied to date. The age of the sulfide inclusion syngenetic to this diamond is estimated at approximately 3.6 billion years", wrote academician Nikolai Pokhilenko, the scientific director of the V.S.Sobolev Institute of Geology and Mineralogy of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
"According to our results, it was captured by growing olivine at sufficiently high temperatures - more than 1400 degrees Celsius and pressures of more than 5.5 hectopascals. This corresponds to depths of about 180km", he added.
Kimberlites are the most common rocks that carry diamonds from the depths of the lithospheric mantle to the earth’s surface. The diamond crystal in question grew out of a silicate or sulfide melt. It was brought to the surface from refractory rocks that form the lithospheric mantle, included in a one-and-a-half-centimetre grain of the olivine mineral. The size of the diamond itself is only about 0.3 millimetres, Pokhilenko explained. "In general, this find and its study confirmed earlier speculative assumptions about the time and parameters of the formation of the lower horizons of the lithosphere, reaching the pressures and temperatures of the diamond stability region, and, accordingly, the period of the appearance of the very first diamonds on the planet in them", he continued. Pokhilenko noted: "Crystal from Udachnaya today, apparently, the oldest on Earth: at least among those that were held in the hands and studied by man".
Scientists also managed to show that the conditions for the formation of diamonds in that era differed significantly from the characteristics of the later processes of formation of the bulk of currently mined crystals. Both the environment and the range of temperatures and pressures changed they claimed, and, accordingly, the depths of formation of later diamonds in a more powerful and cooled lithosphere.

Археологи Южно-Уральского государственного университета проанализировали и обобщили данные по более чем 500 захоронениям ранних кочевников Южного Урала (VI-IV вв. до н. э.), отобрав женские погребения, в которых было найдено оружие - в основном колчаны со стрелами, реже клинковое оружие. Таких оказалось 24, причем большинство женщин скончались в возрасте 25-35 лет и принадлежали к разным слоям общества. Ученые пришли к выводу, что уральские «амазонки» умели обращаться с оружием, но едва ли это было их профессией, скорее полезным в суровых условиях жизни навыком.

In the process of working on the RFBR-grant projects headed by Doctors of Sciences (History) Aleksandr Tairov and Natalia Berseneva, historians are studying the archaeological monuments of the South Ural region. Among the recent studies are the sites with female skeletons buried with their weapons. Upon the results of the research, an article has been published in a top-rated scientific journal Archaeology, Ethnology & Anthropology of Eurasia (Q1).
Female skeletons buried with their weapons discovered at burial grounds of different Northern-Eurasia livestock-herding cultures of the early Iron Age have been the subject of continuing discussions among the Russian and foreign scientists for almost 100 years now. Research fellows of the SUSU Eurasian Studies Research and Education Centre are looking for answers to a multitude of questions.
"The main question is whether Herodotus telling about the Amazons truly meant women of the early nomad tribes? Do archaeological monuments hold proof of that? Do the weapons buried with female skeletons prove that these were female warriors? Do we deal here with social realia (a class of women who directly participated in combat), or did the weapons buried with female skeletons symbolize other types of relationships (gender, status, or hierarchy relationships)? The archaeological monuments of the South Ural region, burial mounds of the early Iron Age, are a full-value source for studying of this issue," says Doctor of Sciences (History) Natalia Berseneva.
As part of the research, a big database was collected with regards to the early nomads of the South Ural region (over 500 burial sites), which covered all the burial grounds of this period (equipment, anthropological identifications, characteristics of the burial structures, etc.). The scientists determined the criteria for selecting the burial sites for analysis and studied 24 South Ural burial sites with female skeletons buried with their weapons. Such burial sites in the South Ural region mostly contain quivers with arrows, while bladed weapons can be rarely found. The majority of women buried with their weapons (over 2/3) died young (at the age of 25-35). The scientists could not find any stable relationship between the age of a dead woman and a weapon category. In order to identify the dynamics of the relationship between the age of a dead woman and presence of a weapon, research within certain age groups is required.
"Female skeletons buried with their weapons were discovered at burial mounds of all status levels: from modest mounds to "regal" ones. This partly answers the question frequently asked by researchers: were the "Amazons" a certain social class, or a permanently active paramilitary force? Obviously, the early nomad women buried with their weapons in the South Ural region did not belong to either category. They varied in social status and belonged to different social classes, from common nomads to elite members of the society. Big number of such skeletons were found in couple or group mounds, which even included children skeletons," says the researcher.
But what exactly did the weapons buried with women symbolize: their profession, social status, or participation in combat? The archaeological materials do not provide a categorical answer. The scientists have concluded that women of the early Sarmatians knew how to handle range weapons, and some probably also used cold arms. The life of nomad livestock herders was full of dangers, so the weapons handling skills increased the chances of survival both for women and their children.
The epoch of the early nomads of the South Ural region is still practically unexplored in the context of reconstructing the life of the ancient societies. Studies in this field allow to fill up one of the most serious blanks in the history of both the Chelyabinsk Region and the whole South Ural region. The research results are of big importance in terms of popularizing and visualizing the knowledge about the Ural region's history, and can be used for preparation of academic courses for school pupils and students, for organization of exhibitions, public lectures and history-theme parks.
South Ural State University is a university of transformations, where innovative research is conducted in most of the priority fields of science and technology development. In accordance with the strategy of scientific and technological development of the Russian Federation, the university is focused on the development of big scientific interdisciplinary projects in the field of digital industry, materials science, and ecology. In 2021 SUSU became the winner in the competition under the Priority 2030 program. The university acts as a regional project office of the World-class Ural Interregional Research and Education Centre (UIREC), which is aimed at solving the tasks of the Science and Universities National Project.

Ученые из Сколково, Медико-генетического научного центра и Федерального исследовательского центра проблем химической физики и медицинской химии РАН опубликовали результаты анализа токсичности материалов, используемых в перовскитных солнечных батареях. Авторы пришли к выводу, что массовое производство этой дешевой и эффективной альтернативы фотоэлементам на основе кремния не должно вызывать каких-либо значительных рисков для окружающей среды и здоровья людей.

Perovskite photovoltaics will be our new future. Everything points to it. These solar panels not only rely on synthetic compounds, but also can achieve higher energy conversion efficiency. Unfortunately, perovskite cells are not without drawbacks, the biggest being their low stability, so they need to be coated with special polymers.
In the pages of Solar materials and solar cells the results of research conducted by scientists from the Russian company Skoltech appeared. Despite the current sanctions and the exclusion of Russian scientists from many international projects, we can still read about some of the discoveries of scientists from this country. Here it is worth considering for a moment the research conducted by experts.
The researchers addressed the toxicity of feedstocks for the next generation of perovskite photovoltaic cells. They studied the effect of specific compounds using the method in the laboratory (on cultured human cells) and in vivo (on mice). They looked at the toxicities of stannous iodide, lead iodide, methylammonium iodide (Ul) and formamidine iodide (Phi).
The results, in both human and mouse cells, provide a concrete conclusion - perovskite solar panels built on a massive scale will not present risks to public health and the environment. The greatest amount of anxiety has been found in small enough amounts in the PSC to be dangerous to our health. Being near solar panels does not cause any side effects. Only when we swallow a piece of a perovskite cell can we face a dangerous situation.
The researchers showed that stannous iodide is 10 times less toxic than lead iodide in PSC. MAI and FAI have the greatest toxicity - these compounds need more attention when creating perovskite units.
In the case of lead, the risk turned out to be minimal. In any case, as it was calculated, if the perovskite sheets completely displaced the silicon technology, the lead in all the cells would only account for 4 percent in the global consumption. This is a similar value for this ingredient that the cosmetic industry uses today.
The Skoltech researchers’ analysis turned out to be essential. As it turns out, not all search results indicate any threats, but they also carry good news and open the way for the implementation of new solutions, as happened in this case. As an exaggeration, it can be concluded that perovskite will not share the fate of asbestos - it is known here before it is put on the market whether it will pose a health hazard.

Исследователи из США, Канады, Швейцарии и России исследовали шесть крупнейших рек, впадающих в Северный Ледовитый океан: Юкон и Маккензи в Северной Америке, Обь, Енисей, Лену и Колыму в России с целью понять, как углерод циркулирует в водосборных бассейнах. Используя данные за восемь лет, они обнаружили, что на долю разлагающейся биомассы в арктических реках приходится более половины твердых органических частиц, попадающих в океан. Это гораздо больше, чем предполагалось ранее, что, в свою очередь, влияет на количество углерода, поглощенное океаном и перемещенное в атмосферу.

Understanding the various sources and reservoirs of carbon is a major focus of Earth science research. Plants and animals use the element for cellular growth. It can be stored in rocks and minerals or in the ocean. Carbon in the form of carbon dioxide can move into the atmosphere, where it contributes to a warming planet.
A new study led by Florida State University researchers found that plants and small organisms in Arctic rivers could be responsible for more than half the particulate organic matter flowing to the Arctic Ocean. That's a significantly greater proportion than previously estimated, and it has implications for how much carbon gets sequestered in the ocean and how much moves into the atmosphere.
Scientists have long measured the organic matter in rivers to understand how carbon was cycling through watersheds. But this research, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that organisms in the Arctic's major rivers are a crucial contributor to carbon export, accounting for about 40 to 60 percent of the particulate organic matter - tiny bits of decaying organisms - flowing into the ocean.
"When people thought about these major Arctic rivers and many other rivers globally, they tended to think of them as sewers of the land, exporting the waste materials from primary production and decomposition on land" said Rob Spencer, a professor in the Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science. "This study highlights that there's a lot of life in these rivers themselves and that a lot of the organic material that is exported is coming from production in the rivers."
Scientists study carbon exported via waterways to better understand how the element cycles through the environment. As organic material on land decomposes, it can move into rivers, which in turn drain into the ocean. Some of that carbon supports marine life, and some sinks to the bottom of the ocean, where it is buried in sediments.
The researchers looked at the six major rivers flowing in the Arctic Ocean: The Yukon and Mackenzie in North America, and the Ob', Yenisey, Lena and Kolyma in Russia. Using data collected over almost a decade, they built models that used the stable and radioactive isotope signatures of carbon and the carbon-to-nitrogen ratios of the particulate organic matter to determine the contribution of possible sources to each river's chemistry.
Not all particulate organic matter is created equal Carbon from soils that gets washed downstream is more likely to be buried in the ocean than the carbon produced within a river. That carbon is more likely to stay floating in the ocean, be eaten by organisms there and eventually breathed out as carbon dioxide.
"It's like the difference between a french fry and a stem of broccoli," said lead author Megan Behnke, a former FSU doctoral student who is now a researcher at the University of Alaska, Southeast. "That broccoli is going to stay in storage in your freezer, but the french fry is much more likely to get eaten."
That means a small increase in a river's biomass could be equivalent to a larger increase in organic material coming from the land. If the carbon in that organic matter moves to the atmosphere, it would affect the rate of carbon cycling and associated climate change in the Arctic.
"I always get excited as a scientist or a researcher when we find new things, and this study found something new in the way that these big Arctic rivers work and how they export carbon to the ocean," Spencer said. "We have to understand the modern carbon cycle if we're really going to begin to understand and predict how it's going to change. This is really relevant for the Arctic at the rate that it's warming and due to the vast carbon stores that it holds."
The study was an international endeavor involving researchers from ten different institutions.
"That pan-Arctic view of science is more important than ever," Behnke said. "The changes that are occurring are far bigger than one institution in one country, and we need these longstanding collaborations. That's critically important to continue."

Российское космическое агентство «Роскосмос» недавно объявило, что снова планирует осуществить давно и неоднократно откладываемый запуск космического аппарата «Луна-25» - на сей раз в июле этого года. Статистика, однако, оптимизма не внушает: последняя межпланетная миссия России состоялась больше десяти лет назад, последняя успешная - почти сорок лет назад. Работа над межпланетной станцией «Луна-25» началась в 2005 г., а ее запуск переносили в общей сложности 13 раз.

The Russian space agency Roscosmos recently announced that it plans to launch its long-delayed Luna-25 mission to the Moon in July of this year. Maybe, just maybe, they will launch the robotic spacecraft this summer, but it seems doubtful that the mission will succeed at its ambitious goal of landing at the Moon’s south pole.
With so few missions beyond Earth orbit during the last 40 years, Russian scientists and engineers have very little experience. Since 1983, Russia and the former Soviet Union have launched eight planetary missions: Venera 15 and 16 in 1983, Vega 1 and 2 in 1984, Phobos 1 and 2 in 1988, Mars 96 in 1996, and Phobos-Grunt in 2011. Although the Vegas and Veneras were mostly successful (with one of the Vega landers setting down on Venus in 1985), after the mid-1980s their success record became terrible: Phobos 1 died in transit to Mars and Phobos 2 died soon after entering Martian orbit, and neither Mars 96 nor Phobos-Grunt even made it out of Earth orbit. There’s a clear and obvious trend in those missions - Russia’s last planetary mission was more than a decade ago, and it has not had a successful mission in more than three decades. Luna-25 has to face some grim statistics.
The Soviet Union’s Luna program had a long and glorious history, as detailed by space analyst Anatoly Zak and others. But the last mission, Luna-24, brought back samples in 1976, and there have been no Soviet or Russian lunar missions since. Planetary missions became rare, and failures led to longer delays before the next mission.
The 2011 Phobos-Grunt mission to one of Mars’ enigmatic moons was very ambitious and seemed doomed to fail, as this author predicted shortly before launch (see "Red moon around a red planet", November 7, 2011). Surprisingly, it didn’t die at Mars, or even in transit to Mars, it died in Earth orbit. The Russian investigation blamed the failure on cosmic rays knocking out systems on the spacecraft, reminiscent of their more recent claims that micrometeorites took out the Soyuz and Progress spacecraft - it’s always an act of God, not an act of Russia. A logical decision at that point would have been to design a planetary program with some initial smaller goals to rebuild skills and knowledge lost in the decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union (see "Red planet blues", The Space Review, November 28, 2011). That did not happen.
In 2011, just before the failure of Phobos-Grunt, the Russians laid out a mid-term "Russian Lunar Program" consisting of Luna-Resource in 2013, Luna-Glob in 2013-2014, a Luna-Rover mission in 2015 or later, to be followed by a Luna-Sample Return mission. Part of the goal of the sample return mission would be to develop techniques for returning future cryogenic samples from the Moon - in other words, keeping the volatiles frozen at or near their temperature when collected. The timeline was a total fantasy, and none of the spacecraft was even under construction despite launch dates only a few years away.
The Phobos-Grunt failure forced a reevaluation of the lunar plans (see "A Russian Moon?", The Space Review, January 28, 2013.) After Phobos-Grunt, Russia scaled back and canceled these lunar plans but would soon have to scale them back further. In early 2013, the Russian government announced plans to launch a lunar orbiter in 2015, followed by a lander a year later, both of them designated Luna-Glob. For at least a little while, it seemed as if Russia was adopting a more logical set of planetary science goals.
Then, for a time, nothing happened. And then for a longer time, nothing continued to happen, at least with the Russian lunar program. In the meantime, China was conducting an impressive series of lunar missions, with orbiters in 2007 and 2010 followed by landers - some equipped with rovers and eventually a sample return system - in 2013, 2018, and 2020.
The Russian 2015 lunar orbiter mission was never real: to meet that deadline it would have had to be already under construction in 2013 when the announcement was made. No lunar orbiter was ever built. Even though orbiters are easier to build than landers, the Russians decided to try a complicated lander going to a location no other vehicle had gone before.
Over the next decade, the lunar lander was assembled, but very slowly. It was designated Luna-25. Rather than a relatively simple lunar orbit mission to rebuild skills and capabilities, the Russians decided to go for broke, picking a lunar landing site that no other country had landed at before - the south pole - and equipping the spacecraft with a sampling arm and a suite of instruments to test soil samples. The descent module is to land near the Boguslawsky crater. Instruments will conduct chemical and spectral analysis of the surrounding area to try and locate lunar water. If the mission succeeds, it would be a major accomplishment. Reading between the lines, it was obvious that the Russians determined that they needed to fly a mission that was unique and impressive, not try to rebuild atrophied skills and capabilities.
Russian space science policy has operated along somewhat schizophrenic lines. On the one hand, to get projects approved, they needed a foreign partner. On the other hand, to pursue Russian-only missions, they had to propose missions that were not something the Americans had already done, even if they lacked the skilled people and technology to make it work. For many years Russian scientists held out hope for conducting another Venus mission - a Soviet specialty during the 1970s - with NASA. But NASA never made this a priority and is now pursuing its own Venus missions. The bigger project was a joint effort with the European Space Agency called ExoMars, which would have landed a European rover on the Red Planet using a Russian lander and rocket. The Russian invasion of Ukraine killed that cooperative effort. Talk about cooperation with China in space has not yielded anything other than more talk. Thus, the future of Russian space science is now mostly dependent upon Luna-25.
But Luna-25’s recent history has not been inspiring.
From July-September 2020, NPO Lavochkin, which was building the spacecraft, conducted thermal vacuum tests of the thermal model spacecraft. By September 2020, the mission was scheduled for launch in October 2021. That launch date was not realistic given the amount of testing that remained to be done, and the launch slipped another year.
By June 2022, the Luna-25 mission was scheduled for launch in September. But according to a report, "a Luna-25 speed and distance sensor required for a safe and soft landing underperformed during testing, leading to the slip from this September into 2023." The sensor was made by the Vega Concern, a member of Rostec’s Ruselectronics holding company, owned by the Rostech State Corporation.
After testing the device and analyzing the received data, engineers decided that an improvement of the software and the landing algorithms was necessary. By December 2022, the device had passed testing and was delivered to Lavochkin, where it was installed on the spacecraft.
Over the past decade other countries new to planetary exploration have developed their technical experience and built upon it. China and India flew increasingly sophisticated lunar missions before accomplishing successful Mars missions on their first try. The UAE flew an impressive mission to Mars that benefitted from substantial American assistance. But the Russians only have three decades of planetary mission failures to build on. China currently has more landers planned, for 2025 and 2026, and one of them is supposed to go to the Moon’s south pole. NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program is behind schedule and is a higher-risk effort that could result in failure, but NASA’s track record with planetary spacecraft is not in question.
If Luna-25 succeeds, its data could be of great value to the scientific community. But given the odds, this mission is likely to meet the same fate as Phobos-Grunt 12 years ago.

Казанские и московские зоологи описали два новых вида ракообразных рода Bryocamptus, обитающих в Арктике. Один вид веслоногих рачков (Bryocamptus putoranus) обнаружился в озерах плато Путорана, второй (Bryocamptus abramovae) - в водоемах дельты реки Лены. Оба вида заметно отличаются друг от друга и от уже известных видов строением конечностей, расположением органов чувств и другими деталями.

A joint publication with Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution Problems (Russian Academy of Sciences) saw light in ZooKeys.
Bryocamptus putoranus is now known for the mountain lakes of the Putorana Plateau, and Bryocamptus abramovae for the thermokarst lakes of the southern part of the Lena Delta. Interestingly, the last of the species is also noted in the lakes of Wrangel Island.
"It turns out that the range of the species consists of two regions, thousands of kilometers apart from each other. These regions are also isolated from each other by the sea area. How could the same species of crustacean settle in such different places? Both the Lena River Delta and Wrangel Island were previously part of the ancient landmass of Beringia, which is now partly submerged by the ocean. Probably, this species of Harpacticoid was settled in the territory that previously connected the Wrangel Islands with the mainland. And the now known habitat of crustaceans is fragments of a larger ancient area," comments Senior Research Associate of the Severtsov Instistute Elena Chertoprud.
Assistant Lecturer of KFU's Department of Zoology and General Biology Alexander Novikov adds, "The two new species of Bryocamptus differ significantly from each other in the structure of the prehensile antennules of the males. Although the structure of the furcal branches of females is similar. This fact may indicate the convergence of modifications of furcal branches of females, while significant differences in the antennules of males illustrate the origin of species from different ancestral forms."
The scientists drew attention to the high diversity and specificity of the fauna of copepods in the reservoirs of the Lena River Delta and the Putorana Plateau. In recent years, they have shown that the northern part of Central Siberia is indeed rich with crustaceans. The main reason for the presence of a significant number of endemic taxa in the region was that this region was not completely covered by the last Pleistocene glaciation. Thus, the ancient fauna had the opportunity to be preserved in refugia, and today copepods, contemporaries of mammoths, live in the north of Central Siberia.

Китайская академия наук представила некоторые задачи, которые предполагается решить с помощью совместного космического проекта Китая и России - международной лунной исследовательской станции, которая должна начать работать в 2035 году. Это изучение эволюции Луны, исследования звездообразования, поиск пригодных для жизни человечества планет, а также проведение серии экспериментов.

The International Lunar Research Station (ILRS), a mega space project jointly proposed by the national space agencies of China and Russia that is intended to become operational by 2035, has selected five primary scientific and application objectives, including learning about the moon's evolution and searching for another habitable planet for humanity, revealed Zou Yongliao, head of the lunar and deep space exploration division of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).
"The review and study on the blueprint for the ILRS has yet to be concluded, but phased progress has been achieved, with scientists coming up with specific objectives for science and applications," Zou, who is also the deputy head of the CAS National Space Science Center, told a recent national space conference, according to an article the center's WeChat public account published on Tuesday. Zou told the Global Times on Wednesday that such objectives are the results of two-year-long reviews by leading scientists from both China and Russia, and Chinese scientists played a key role in proposing them.
The scientist noted that the moon is still the "major field" of space exploration and the construction of the ILRS was a great necessity. The primary goals for the ILRS will include first studying the moon's evolution, so that scientists could construct a detailed structural module of the lunar interior in a plan called "transparent moon." The scientists will also carry out exploration of star formation and activity, search for habitable home planets for humanity in space, and seek to answer the question if we are alone in the universe.
Other objectives comprise observing the sun and Earth from the moon, and conducting lunar-based experiments in basic science, Zou revealed, citing studies on "plants' growth and development in the lunar environment" for example. The ILRS scientists will also attempt to make use of lunar resources including minerals and solar energy.
Russia and China are actively cooperating in the area of space activities, first of all on the ILRS, the director general of Russia's state space corporation Roscosmos, Yury Borisov, said on Tuesday, Russian news agency TASS reported. According to Borisov, work is underway on the first stage of the ILRS project - domestic lunar programs. Russia plans to launch three lunar missions. "We will proceed to the second stage while discussing the results of the first stage," he added.
China aims to complete the building of the basic structure for the ILRS by around 2028 through its Chang'e-6, -7, and -8 lunar probe missions, said Wu Weiren, the chief designer of China's lunar exploration program, in March. Chang'e-6 will attempt to retrieve 1-2 kilograms of samples from lunar pole regions and return them to Earth. Chang'e-7 will land on the south pole of the moon to try to find ice and survey the region's environment and landform. Chang'e-8, the final phase, will scout how to exploit the resources on the lunar south pole, Wu elaborated. According to Wu, the basic structure, which will be built by around 2028, will consist of lunar landers, rovers and "smart hoppers," as well as an energy system, communication infrastructure and human life support system.
According to the official road map for the building of ILRS, which was jointly unveiled by Roscosmos and China National Space Administration in June 2021, the construction of the lunar station is expected to be completed by 2035. Two missions are planned in 2026-2030 to test the technologies of landing and cargo delivery, as well as the transportation of lunar soil samples to Earth. The plans envisage developing infrastructure in orbit and on the moon's surface in 2031-2035, in particular, communications systems, electrical power, research and other equipment.

В одном из экспонатов калининградского Музея янтаря обнаружили ранее неизвестный вид насекомых - предков современных ос. Доисторические перепончатокрылые возрастом около 40 млн лет получили название Palaeorhoptrocentrus kanti - в честь Иммануила Канта.

Scientists from the Amber Museum in Kaliningrad and the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg discovered the remains of a previously unknown insect. This is the ancestor of the wasp, which is 40 million years old. This was announced on March 23 by the press service of the museum.
The director of the office, Marina Kuznetsova, said: "In a piece of amber preserved in our museum, a vital artifact was found that has no analogues in the world, and after magnifying it 20 times, it became clear that the amber contains previously unknown insects that are the ancestors of modern hornets, which were frozen in resin. Naturally, it is clear.
Scientists talk about the discovery of new species of Braconidae parasites in Baltic amber. It was named Palaeorhoptrocentrus kanti in honor of the great thinker Immanuel Kant, who was born and lived in Königsberg (now Kaliningrad).
In March of this year, this discovery was reported by the scientific journal Zootaxa, which talks about the evolution and classification of animals. The journal published an article by Sergei Belokobelsky, a researcher at the Institute of Zoology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and Andranik Manukyan, a researcher at the Amber Museum, who made a discovery and described in detail a new species of prehistoric insect, and also compared it with extinct and modern arthropods. Consequently, the insect, which can be considered the ancestor of the wasp, also had, in addition to two large true eyes, three eyes of medium size on the forehead, and the mustache, which acts as antennae, was 1.2 times longer than the body of the insect, instead of the stinging device of the modern wasp.
The authors of the article believe that these parasites were attracted by the smell of fresh resin from the amber tree where their victims lived. These parasites lived at that time in the "Amber" forest, and after their disappearance they died out. And later, her distant descendants were found only in the tropics.
According to Marina Kuznetsova, the collection of the Amber Museum has more than 10 reference specimens of various insects aged 40-45 million years, all of them were preserved in pieces of amber, which are of great value for science.

Космический корабль «Союз МС-22» благополучно отстыковался от российского сегмента Международной космической станции и вернулся на Землю без экипажа. В результате разгерметизации охлаждающего контура в декабре прошлого года «Союз» оказался непригоден для пилотируемого полета.

Russia's uncrewed Soyuz spacecraft landed in Kazakhstan Tuesday morning after suffering a major coolant leak in December.
The Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft landed in Kazakhstan at 7:46 a.m. EDT on Tuesday after leaving the docking port of the Russian-built Rassvet module of the International Space Station.
"It's de-orbiting and descent to Earth went smoothly," Roscosmos officials announced on Telegram after landing. Images showed the spacecraft descending under its parachute and at rest on its side after landing. The Russian spacecraft exited orbit 55 minutes after undocking, more than twice as qucikly as usual, as it left its crew behind, NASA spokesman Rob Navias said.
The MS-22 was launched in September to transport several Russian cosmonauts to the International Space State on a six-month mission. However, in December the capsule was hit by an asteroid and began leaking coolant. As a result, a Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft was launched with 948 pounds of supplies to replace the leaky spacecraft.
The crew, including Station Commander Sergey Prokopyev and Roscosmos cosmonauts Andrey Fedyaev and Dmitri Petelin, as well as UAE astronaut Sultan Alneyadi and NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen, Woody Hoburg and Frank Rubio remained aboard the space station. The three cosmonauts are expected to return to Earth later this year.
A recovery team will recover the MS-22 to examine the spacecraft and investigate how the leak occurred. Sophie Goguichvili, the program associate for the science and technology innovation program with the Wilson Center think tank in Washington, D.C., told UPI last month that meteoroids will continue to be an issue for Roscosmos and other spaceflight operators. She also noted that the leak was not the first suffered by a Russian spacecraft. In 2018, a "slight drop" in cabin pressure at the ISS was traced back to a small hole in the habitation compartment of the Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft.

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