Russian President Vladimir Putin issued a decree granting the title of "Hero of Russia" to astronaut Denis Matveev.
The text of the statement issued by the Russian Presidency stated: “President Vladimir Putin granted the title of Hero of Russia to astronaut Denis Matveev. Matveev was awarded this title for his courage and heroism that appeared during his long journey to the International Space Station.”
Matveev was born in 1983 in Leningrad (now Petersburg), and in 2006 he completed his studies at Bauman State Technical University, where he was trained in the university’s military department.
In 2010, he worked as a research fellow in the ranks of test astronauts in Russia, and in 2012 he joined the ranks of astronauts at Roscosmos, and in 2022 he went on a trip to the International Space Station with the two Russian astronauts, Oleg Artemyev and Sergey Korsakov, as the astronauts remained. On board the station for 195 days, they returned to Earth on September 29, 2022.
Spacecraft depicts its 'broken and lonely' Ingenuity helicopter companion on Martian sand dunes
NASA's Perseverance rover snapped a photo of its crashed companion, the Ingenuity helicopter, sitting alone on a sand dune.
In this latest image of the Ingenuity helicopter, it can be seen sitting still on a sand dune in the background, while the barren, rocky landscape of Mars fills the foreground.
The photo was taken on February 4, 2024 at 1:05 pm local solar time (the method of calculating the passage of time depending on the position of the sun in the sky), a little more than two weeks after the helicopter suffered damage that led to the end of its mission.
One of Ingenuity's propeller blades broke on January 18 during its 72nd voyage to the Red Planet when it landed incorrectly in an area "empty" of the sandy Martian landscape that normally helps it navigate.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is still analyzing the damage to Ingenuity's blades, but regardless of what the lab found, the helicopter's mission is now officially over because it can no longer fly.
The Ingenuity helicopter landed alongside its robotic companion, the Perseverance rover, on February 18, 2021. When it took to the skies of Mars in April 2021, Ingenuity made history by conducting the first flight of a powered aircraft on another planet.
The Ingenuity and Perseverance duo have been exploring an area known as Jezero Crater ever since, where they discovered signs of ancient bodies of water on the Red Planet that may have harbored life billions of years ago.
Over the past few days, as NASA and JPL reached an agreement to end Ingenuity's groundbreaking mission, NASA leaders praised the helicopter and the science teams behind it.
Tiffany Morgan, deputy director of NASA's Mars Exploration Program, said Ingenuity leaves behind a legacy that could pave the way for future flyby missions on other worlds.
NASA is already developing another otherworldly drone, the nuclear-powered Dragonfly, to one day explore Saturn's largest moon, Titan. The agency expects the Dragonfly to be launched no later than 2028.
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