Soviet space program Soviet space program Ashburton balls is the name given to an incident that occured on April 3, 1972 in Ashburton, New Zealand. The incident involved the Russian space vessel Cosmos 482 which broke into four parts while attempting to leave earth on March 31, 1972, two of which remained in low orbit and eventually rained down on Earth. At 1 am on April 3, 1972, four red-hot 13.6kg titanium alloy balls landed within a 16km radius of each other, just outside Ashburton, New Zealand. ...more on Wikipedia about "Ashburton balls"
Astron was a Soviet astrophysical spacecraft launched on March 23 1983. It was based on Venera spacecraft design. Astron was operational for six years being the largest ultraviolet space telescope of that time. ...more on Wikipedia about "Astron (spacecraft)"
The Baikonur Cosmodrome ( Kazakh: Байқоңыр ғарыш айлағы, Bayqoñır ğarış aylağı; Russian: Космодром Байконур, Kosmodrom Baykonur), also called Tyuratam, is the world's oldest and largest working space launch facility. It was originally built by the Soviets and is now under Russian regulation, although located in Kazakhstan. It is situated about 200 km to the east of the Aral Sea, on the north bank of the Syr Darya, near the town of Tyuratam, in the south-central part of the country. ...more on Wikipedia about "Baikonur Cosmodrome"
Cosmos 21 is the NASA designation for a Soviet spacecraft with unknown mission. This mission has been tentatively identified by NASA as a technology test of the Venera series space probes. It may have been an attempted Venus flyby, presumably similar to the later Cosmos 27 mission, or it may have been intended from the beginning to remain in geocentric orbit. In any case, the spacecraft never left Earth orbit after insertion by the SL-6/A-2-e launcher. The orbit decayed on November 14, three days after launch. ...more on Wikipedia about "Cosmos 21"
This spacecraft mission was intended as a Venus flyby. The SL-6/A-2-e launcher successfully achieved Earth orbit, but the spacecraft failed to escape orbit for its flight to Venus, and was designated Cosmos 27. ...more on Wikipedia about "Cosmos 27"
Cosmos 419 was launched by the Soviet Union on May 10, 1971. Mars was at its closest to Earth since 1956, and in May that year both the Soviet Union and the United States made new attempts to reach the Red Planet. Cosmos' payload however failed to separate from the fourth stage of the launch vehicle, and Cosmos 419 reentered Earth's atmosphere two days after launch. ...more on Wikipedia about "Cosmos 419"
The Cosmos 482 probe, launched March 31, 1972 at 04:02:33 UTC, was an attempted Venus probe which failed to escape low Earth orbit. It was launched by an SL-6/A-2-e launcher 4 days after the Venera 8 atmospheric probe and may have been similar in design and mission plan. After achieving an Earth parking orbit, the spacecraft made an apparent attempt to launch into a Venus transfer trajectory. It separated into four pieces, two of which remained in low Earth orbit and decayed within 48 hours into south New Zealand (known as the Ashburton balls incident), and two pieces (presumably the payload and detached engine unit) went into a higher 210 x 9800 km orbit. It is thought that a malfunction resulted in an engine burn which did not achieve sufficient velocity for the Venus transfer and left the payload in this elliptical Earth orbit. ...more on Wikipedia about "Cosmos 482"
The Cosmos 60 probe, launched by the Soviet Union on March 12 1965, was intended to be a lunar soft-landing mission, with a design similar to that of Luna 4. The spacecraft achieved Earth orbit but failed to leave orbit for its journey to the Moon for unknown reasons, and was designated Cosmos 60. It had an on-orbit mass of 6530 kg. ...more on Wikipedia about "Cosmos 60"
Cosmos 954 was a Soviet Radar Ocean Reconnaissance Satellite ( RORSAT) with an onboard nuclear reactor. The satellite's reactor core failed to separate and boost into a nuclear-safe orbit, and instead remained onboard in an orbit that decayed until the satellite reentered Earth's atmosphere January 24, 1978. The satellite crashed near the Great Slave Lake (in the Northwest Territories, Canada), spreading its radioactive fuel over a 124,000 km² (48,000 mile²) area. Subsequent recovery efforts by a joint American-Canadian team swept the area by foot and air until the Autumn ice breakup in October made further searches impractical. They were ultimately able to recover 12 larger pieces of the satellite. These pieces displayed radioactivity of up to 1.1 sieverts per hour, yet they only comprised an estimated 1% of the fuel. For these recovery efforts, the Canadian Government billed the Soviet Union $15 million. Though the U.S.S.R. paid less than half of that amount, many were surprised that they even acknowledged that a satellite had crashed. ...more on Wikipedia about "Cosmos 954"
The Energia (or Energiya, Энергия in Russian) rocket was a Soviet rocket that was designed by NPO Energia to serve as a heavy-lift expendable launch system as well as a booster for the Buran Space Shuttle. It had the capacity to place around 100 metric tons in Low Earth orbit (LEO), although it could have been (but never was) upgraded for heavier payloads comparable to (or even greater than) the LEO capacity of the Saturn V. It was first test-launched in 1987 with the Polyus spacecraft (UKSS military payload), where the Energia itself functioned well, but the Polyus failed to reach orbit due to a malfunction of its own attitude control system after separation from Energia. The only other flight to orbit has been the successful mission in which the unmanned Buran orbiter (space shuttle) was brought to orbit, in 1988. ...more on Wikipedia about "Energia"
The Intercosmos program was a program by the Soviet Union to allow fellow Socialist nations to participate in space exploration. Most notable were the manned space flight missions, but also unmanned satellites were part of the program. ...more on Wikipedia about "Intercosmos"
Kapustin Yar ( Russian Капустин Яр; today Знаменск/Znamensk) is a Russian rocket launch and development site in the Astrakhan Oblast, between Volgograd and Astrakhan. It was established in 1946 and in its beginning used technology, material, and scientific support from defeated Germany. The first rocket was launched on October 18, 1947. It was one of eleven German A-4s (the V-2 rocket) that had been captured. Numerous test rockets for the Russian military, satellite and elevator research rocket launches were also carried out at the site. Supposedly, In 1948, a "Cigar" shaped UFO was shot down by a Russian MiG jet over Kapustin Yar. ...more on Wikipedia about "Kapustin Yar"
Mars 1 (1962 Beta Nu 1) was an automatic interplanetary station launched in the direction of Mars on November 1, 1962, the first of the Soviet Mars probe program, with the intent of flying by the planet at a distance of about 11,000 km. It was designed to image the surface and send back data on cosmic radiation, micrometeoroid impacts and Mars' magnetic field, radiation environment, atmospheric structure, and possible organic compounds. After leaving Earth orbit, the spacecraft and the booster fourth stage separated and the solar panels were deployed. Early telemetry indicated that there was a leak in one of the gas valves in the orientation system so the spacecraft was transferred to gyroscopic stabilization. Sixty-one radio transmissions were held, initially at two day intervals and later at 5 days in which a large amount of interplanetary data were collected. On 21 March 1963, when the spacecraft was at a distance of 106,760,000 km from Earth on its way to Mars, communications ceased, probably due to failure of the spacecraft's antenna orientation system. Mars 1 closest approach to Mars occurred on June 19, 1963 at a distance of approximately 193,000 km, after which the spacecraft entered a heliocentric orbit. ...more on Wikipedia about "Mars 1"
The Mars program was a series of Mars unmanned landers and orbiters launched by the Soviet Union in the early 1970s. ...more on Wikipedia about "Mars probe program" Things Go Better with shortopedia.
The Marsnik program of unmanned spacecraft were the Soviet Union's first attempt at interplanetary exploration. ...more on Wikipedia about "Marsnik program"
The Meteor craft are weather observation satellites launched by the USSR. The Meteor satellites were designed to monitor atmospheric and sea-surface temperatures, humidity, radiation, sea ice conditions, snow-cover, and clouds. ...more on Wikipedia about "Meteor (satellite)"
The Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-105 "Spiral" was a Soviet Union project to create an orbital spaceplane. Work on this project began in 1965. The project was ended in 1971. Spiral may have been strongly influenced by an earlier American project, the X-20 Dyna-Soar. ...more on Wikipedia about "Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-105"
Mir (Мир, which can mean both world and peace in Russian) was a highly successful Soviet (and later Russian) space station. It was humanity's first consistently inhabited long-term research station in space. Through a number of collaborations, it was made internationally accessible to cosmonauts and astronauts of many different countries. Mir was assembled in orbit by successively connecting several modules, each launched separately from February 19, 1986 to 1996. The station existed until March 23, 2001, at which point it was deliberately de-orbited and broke apart during atmospheric re-entry. ...more on Wikipedia about "Mir"
Molniya ("lightning") was a military communications satellite system used by the Soviet Union. The satellites used highly eccentric elliptical orbits of +63.4 degrees inclination and orbital period of about 12 hours (called Molniya orbits), which allowed them to be visible to polar regions for long periods. The use of this kind of orbit was necessitated by the fact that sites near the poles are not able to communicate with satellites in geosynchronous orbits. The program has been authorized by the government decree in late 1960. After some initial failures in 1964 the first operational satellite Molniya 1-01 was launched on August 23, 1965. ...more on Wikipedia about "Molniya (satellite)"
N1 or N-1 was the Soviet rocket intended to send Soviet cosmonauts to the Moon, preferably ahead of the Americans. Development of the N-1 began in 1956 with the intent of providing a heavy booster for Military Space Stations and a manned Mars flyby using a nuclear engine upper stage. When the US announced the goal of landing a man on the moon in 1961 the N1 was diverted to matching this objective. The Russian Moon rocket program was first led by Sergei Korolev until his death in 1966 and later by his deputy Vasily Mishin when Mishin became the head of Korolev's OKB-1 Design Bureau. However, the project seemed to be insufficiently funded, and was not a success. ...more on Wikipedia about "N1 rocket"
The Nedelin catastrophe or Nedelin disaster was a launch pad accident that occurred on October 24, 1960, at Baikonur Cosmodrome during the development of the Soviet R-16 ICBM. As a prototype of the missile was being prepared for a test flight, it spontaneously exploded on the launch pad, killing over 100 military personnel, engineers, and technicians working on the project. Despite the magnitude of the disaster, news of it was covered up for many years by the Soviet government and did not emerge until the 1990s. ...more on Wikipedia about "Nedelin catastrophe"
The Orlan space suits are a series of semi-rigid space suits designed and built by NPP Zvezda for use in the Soviet space program and Russian space program. They are used for extra-vehicular activity (spacewalks). ...more on Wikipedia about "Orlan space suits"
The Phobos program was an unmanned space mission consisting of two probes launched by the Soviet Union to study Mars and its moons Phobos and Deimos. Phobos 2 became Mars and returned 38 images with a resolution of up to 40 meters. Both probes suffered from critical failures. ...more on Wikipedia about "Phobos program"
Plesetsk Cosmodrome is a Russian spaceport, located about 800 km north of Moscow and south of Arkhangelsk (coordinates vary in different sources, but seems plausible). ...more on Wikipedia about "Plesetsk Cosmodrome"
The Proton (Прото́н) rocket (formal designation: UR-500, also known as D-1) is a Russian unmanned space vehicle design first launched in 1965 and still in use as of 2005. ...more on Wikipedia about "Proton rocket"
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