Mikhail Kovalchuk, President of the Kurchatov Institute National Research Centre, Chairman of the Scientific Council of the Federal Research Centre “Crystallography and Photonics” of the RAS, paid a working visit to Samara University. During the meeting, University President Viktor Soyfer and the University’s scientists presented to him applied innovative developments of the Image Processing Systems Institute of the RAS and Samara University.



Ivan Tkachenko, Director of the Institute of Aviation and Space-Rocket Engineering, introduced Mikhail Kovalchuk to an engineering mock-up of the AIST-ST small Earth remote sensing spacecraft being developed jointly with the Special Technology Centre, a St. Petersburg company. The SSC intended for radar surveillance of the planet surface in the X range was recently presented at the Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum. Ivan Tkachenko also spoke about the current SSC constellation of the University and RSC Progress in Earth orbit.

David Ovakimyan, Head of the Centre for Unmanned Systems at Samara University, demonstrated the University’s training software and hardware complex designed to train drone pilots, as well as an aeromobile complex for environmental monitoring of the atmosphere. On the base of the Centre, serial production of drones has been organized, with about 1,000 unmanned aerial vehicles in total to have been assembled by the end of the year. Now apparatuses with their own payloads – chromatographs, hyperspectrometers – are being assembled here.

Roman Skidanov, Professor of the Department of Engineering Cybernetics, told Mikhail Kovalchuk about compact hyperspectrometers created at the University, which significantly expand the capabilities of domestic drones and nanosatellites. Being equipped with such devices, miniaturized spacecraft in CubeSat format will be able, for example, to more effectively solve the tasks of environmental monitoring and smart farming.

Mikhail Kovalchuk was impressed by the presented innovations and invited the university scientists to pay a return visit to Kurchatov Institute.