The launch of ISS Expedition 56 is due on June 6, 2018 from Baikonur with astronauts Serena Auñón-Chancellor of NASA, Alexander Gerst of the European Space Agency (ESA), cosmonaut Sergey Prokopyev of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, and with the famous Hungarian Pille dosimeter system developed and manufactured by our research group.
The Soyuz MS-09 (No. 739) spacecraft will be launched on top of a Soyuz FG launcher and expected to dock to the International Space Station two days later. As we reported it earlier, the new Pille Reader is going to replace the instrument that has been in operation in the Zvezda module since 2003. The instrument package to be delivered contains eight new Pille dosimeters as well. With this, the total number of Pille dosimeters on board will increase to 20. The change of the old system will be performed after cross-comparison measurements on board which means that for some weeks, both Pille readers will be operated on ISS.
Development of the very first version of the Pille instrument began 40 years ago and the story does not ends here. Our Russian partners expressed their intention to operate Pille on ISS until the end of the operation of the space station, i.e. at least until 2024.
Maintenance and development of the Pille-ISS system in 2017 was funded by the Government of Hungary, contract number IKF/694/2017-NFM_SZERZ .