Foton-M No.2

Foton-M No.2 was an uncrewed Foton-M research spacecraft that carried a European payload for the European Space Agency into low Earth orbit in 2005. It flew on a Russian Soyuz-U rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, launched by the Russian space agency, and it was the replacement for the Foton-M No.1 mission lost in a launch failure in October 2002. The payload weighed 600 kilograms in all, including 385 kilograms of experiments: 39 investigations in fluid physics, biology, materials science, meteoritics, radiation dosimetry and exobiology, including the BIOPAN-5 exposure facility and some experiments designed within the European student programme. One notable experiment showed that lichen could survive more than 14 days of exposure to space. The Foton-M spacecraft are produced by TsSKB-Progress in Samara, today the Progress Rocket Space Centre.