Russian scientists together with the specialists from the space industry intend to create mini-satellites which for the first time in the world will be able to join in groups, educate themselves and even repair each other without leaving the orbit, as the director of the Institute of Strength Physics and Materials Science (ISPMS) of SB RAS (Tomsk) Sergey Psakhye told to RIA Novosti.

      Earlier a  roundtable discussion with the participation of local universities, “RSC” Energia” OJSC and other enterprises was held in Tomsk. The participants of the event proposed to create a theme-related consortium for the development of thematic clusters “CubeSats” - artificial mini-satellites of the Earth used for space research and other tasks.

      “This is a new step in the development of cosmonautics. The idea is to make “swarms” of such satellites capable of learning, interacting with each other, transmitting commands. Different groups of satellites will have different functions. For example, the pilot-cosmonaut Vladimir Dzhanibekov suggested that these may be “spider” satellites that will grab other satellites with their arms and repair them in the outer space”- Psakhye said.