* Astronomy

The Kompas-2 satellite, designed to forecast earthquakes from space, will be launched into space in the second quarter of 2006.

The "Kompas" is Russian space program pilot project for creation of a constellation of satellites to monitor natural and man-made catastrophes.

The weight of Kompas-2 amounts to 80 kg. It mounts equipment, designed by scientists from the Earth Magnetism and Radio Wave Propagation Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

"The Kompas-2 satellite is expected to be launched into space by a strategic submarine from the Barents Sea. Scientists hope to learn to predict earthquakes by monitoring specific phenomena in the Earth's magnetosphere and ionosphere, preceding earthquakes" - Yury Zaitsev, an advisor with the Engineering Science Academy.

Scientists hope to use abnormal phenomena in the ionosphere to predict powerful earthquakes several days before they happen. Russia confirming the phenomena in the late 1970s, when the Interkosmos-19 satellite obtained data. Scientists also noted a concentration of radon near the epicentre and a concentration of electrons in ionosphere over the area.

"The equipment, mounted on the satellite, detected deviations in the low-frequency band over the earthquake epicentre, registered several hours before the first earth tremor. Since the data were obtained in addition to other scientific researches, it was decided to launch a special satellite into space in order to predict earthquakes" - Yury Zaitsev.

Scientists from the Earth Magnetism and Radio Wave Propagation Institute were joined by experts from the Makeyev State Rocket Centre, who started developing the satellite and offered to launch it from a submarine with the help of a converted Shtil launch vehicle.

The Kompas-1 experimental satellite was launched into orbit in December 2001. It was not completely successful, but has allowed to determine the weak parties of a system

"The objective of the launch consisted in evaluating capabilities of special devices of forecasting earthquakes. Unfortunately, a hardware failures did not allow the research to be completed, although, first data obtained were quite promising" - Yury Zaitsev.

The research was resumed with the help of the Meteor-3M weather satellite in 2002-2003.

"The satellite predicted 44 out of 47 earthquakes" - Yury Zaitsev.

In addition to that, International Space Station crews conduct experiments in this sphere as well. The results are expected to be used for developing the Vulkan geo-space system satellites, tasked with forecasting and monitoring natural and man-caused disasters.
The Kompas-2 was designed to gather statistics and refine the onboard equipment. In addition, the Kompas-3 satellite is expected to be launched in the fourth quarter of 2006 to test new monitoring devices.
This project will be for the scientific equipment functional check.