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September 18, 2019
Russian cosmonauts will have a weapon in their kit to protect themselves from wild animals during the landing.
Image above: Dmitry Rogozin, head of the Russian Space Agency. (Photo: AFP / Yuri Kochetkov).
Russia will arm its cosmonauts with a special pistol designed to protect them from wild animals if they land in a remote and sparsely populated area, Russian Space Agency (Roskosmos) chief Dmitry Rogozin said on Wednesday.
"This weapon is already being tested," Rogozine was quoted by the official TASS news agency as saying.
"I think in a year and a half, it's very, very likely" that she's part of the cosmonauts kit.
According to Rogozine, this is a modern version of the three-gun pistol developed during the Soviet era.
A kit with a weapon
This weapon could be incorporated into the cosmonaut rescue kit once the manned flights are made from the new Russian cosmodrome, in a remote area of ?? The Far East.
"Landings could take place in this sparsely populated, forested, forest-steppe area, and cosmonauts say it would be nice to have something like that in the kit," Rogozine said.
The latter specified that such a weapon could be used to carry out signaling shots in case of landing in a remote area, as well as to defend himself.
The animals prepare the defense! Image Credits: RT/Vladimir Kremlev
Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenkov, the crew chief of the ISS who recently returned to Earth, expressed this need during a press conference on Tuesday: "It is possible that (the place of landing) a wilderness area and we need a special knife to build a shelter and a weapon for wild animals. "
The three-barrel TP-82 pistol, which was part of the cosmonaut rescue kit since the 1980s, was removed in 2007.
Roscosmos: https://www.roscosmos.ru/
Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: AFP/Orbiter.ch Aerospace/Roland Berga.
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