N° 7–1995: Launch of Russian Foton-10 capsule with ESA payload

This is the fourth time that ESA is present with a major microgravity payload facility on an unmanned Russian satellite. The retrievable Foton-10 capsule, that is scheduled to land in the Russian-Kazakh border region on 3 March, carries the Biobox-2 incubator with experiments on cells responsible for bone mineralization and on small living organism (fruit flies and algae) from research institutes in Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Spain and Russia. These experiments will contribute to a better understanding of the phenomenon of bone mass loss experienced by astronauts in space and will help identify and quantify the influence of absence of gravity on living systems.

The previous missions in this domain with large ESA
involvement have been:

- October 1992:

Foton-8 capsule carrying ESA's
Biopan facility (Biopan-0, with a
set of pilot experiments).

- December 1992:

Bion-10 mission with Biobox-1
on board.(Biobox contained
experiments on cell biology (see
also ESA Press Release no. 3 -93)).

- June 1994:

Foton-9/ second flight of Biopan
(Biopan-1, with experiments on
radiation and exobiology).

During the current flight of the Foton-10 capsule, Biobox
data will be passed on from the Foton Flight Control Centre
in Moscow to ESA's microgravity Laboratory Moslab, in
Moscow, from where they will be distributed via a Wide
Area Network to the investigators' home institutes.

After landing, the entire ESA payload will be dismounted
from the capsule and flown back to Moslab within 48 hours
for final disassembly and first data analysis.
The Foton 10 payload development and mission management
was carried out under the responsibility of ESA's
Microgravity Payload Division at ESA's research and
technology centre ESTEC in the Netherlands. Biobox was
developed under the industrial prime contractorship of
Dornier (Germany) while all flight and ground operations in
Russia are run for ESA by Kayser Italia (Italy).