“Stork” filmed more than 93 million sq. km
April 16, 2024, the small spacecraft Aist-2D completed its work in orbit. The press service of Roscosmos spoke about this.
The device was developed by RKTs «Progress» (part of Roscosmos) together with the Samara National Research University named after S.P. Korolev and launched as part of the first launch campaign from the Vostochny cosmodrome. As the press service emphasized, «Aist-2D» worked in orbit for almost 8 years, more than doubling its declared active lifespan.
The area of the earth's surface photographed by the device during its operation is more than 93 million km2. During its work in orbit, Earth remote sensing information from the small spacecraft «Aist-2D» helped in solving various socio-economic problems: monitoring the destruction of infrastructure and engineering facilities, flood control, detecting places of illegal mining, identifying places of illegal dumping, monitoring wild fires and volcanic activity, monitoring urban development, implementing educational projects and many others.
Currently, specialists from RCC «Progress» continue to work on the project of the space complex for remote sensing of the Earth for stereoscopic imaging “Aist”, which includes the creation of two small spacecraft “Aist-2T”. They will be used to obtain panchromatic and overlapping convergent (stereoscopic) images, and color (spectrozonal) images of the earth's surface.