Ural scientists develop magnetometer for Kazakhstan nanosatellite

A nanosatellite being developed in Kazakhstan, a Russian neighbor in Central Asia, may be equipped with a Russian magnetometer being created in the Urals? Yekaterinburg

A nanosatellite being developed at al-Farabi National University in Kazakhstan, a Russian neighbor in Central Asia, may be equipped with a Russian magnetometer being created at Ural Federal University (UrFU) in Yekaterinburg, the UrFU press service announced. Russian scientists and students at UrFU?s Institute of Physics and Technology (IPT) have plans to make a lightweight instrument?less than a kilo?to measure the Earth?s magnetic field. A technical specification for the device is due soon, UrFU said. The Kazakhstan partners expect to launch their satellite from the Baikonur Space Center in late 2014, using a Russian rocket. Earlier this year IPT?s quantum magnetometry lab at UrFU designed a set of instruments that recently helped find the largest fragment of the ?Chelyabinsk? meteorite (the one that fell into Lake Chebarkul in the neighboring Chelyabinsk region in February 2013, following the cleavage of an asteroid in the terrestrial atmosphere and causing a series of atmospheric explosions that brought about wreckage in several surrounding regions, including those in Kazakhstan). In September, UrFU set up a spin-off company to commercialize the new instruments into projects that require contactless flaw detection and the monitoring of oil and gas pipelines...