Soviet space program
Космическая программа СССР Kosmicheskaya programma SSSR | |
Formed | 1955–1991 |
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Dissolved | December 25, 1991 |
Manager |
|
Key people | Design Bureaus |
Primary spaceport | Cosmodrome Baikonur, Plesetsk |
First flight | Sputnik 1 (4 October 1957) |
First crewed flight | Vostok 1 (12 April 1961) |
Last flight | 25 December 1991 |
Last crewed flight | Soyuz TM-13 (2 October 1991) |
Successes | See accomplishments |
Failures | See failures below |
Partial failures | See partial or cancelled projects Soviet lunar program |
Part of a series of articles on the |
Soviet space program |
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The Soviet space program
Soviet investigations in
After WWII, the Soviet and
The Soviet space program served as an important marker of Soviet claims to its
Origins
Early Russian-Soviet efforts
The theory of
Gas Dynamics Laboratory (GDL)
The first Soviet development of rockets was in 1921 when the Soviet military sanctioned the commencement of a small research laboratory to explore
Sergey Korolev
A key contributor to early soviet efforts came from a young Russian aircraft engineer
Group for the Study of Reactive Motion (GIRD)
Practical aspects built on early experiments carried out by members of the 'Group for the Study of Reactive Motion' (better known by its Russian acronym "
Reactive Scientific Research Institute (RNII)
In 1933 GIRD was merged with GDL[22] by the Soviet government to form the Reactive Scientific Research Institute (RNII),[29] which brought together the best of the Soviet rocket talent, including Korolev, Langemak, Ivan Kleymyonov and former GDL engine designer Valentin Glushko.[33][34] Early success of RNII included the conception in 1936 and first flight in 1941 of the RP-318 the Soviets first rocket-powered aircraft and the RS-82 and RS-132 missiles entered service by 1937,[35] which became the basis for development in 1938 and serial production from 1940 to 1941 of the Katyusha multiple rocket launcher, another advance in the reactive propulsion field.[36][37][38] RNII's research and development were very important for later achievements of the Soviet rocket and space programs.[38][21]
During the 1930s Soviet rocket technology was comparable to Germany's,[39] but Joseph Stalin's Great Purge severely damaged its progress. In November 1937, Kleymyonov and Langemak were arrested and later executed, Glushko and many other leading engineers were imprisoned in the Gulag.[40] Korolev was arrested in June 1938 and sent to a forced labour camp in Kolyma in June 1939. However, due to intervention by Tupolev, he was relocated to a prison for scientists and engineers in September 1940.[41]
World War II
During World War II rocketry efforts were carried out by three Soviet design bureaus.[42] RNII continued to develop and improve solid fuel rockets, including the RS-82 and RS-132 missiles and the Katyusha rocket launcher,[24] where Pobedonostsev and Tikhonravov continued to work on rocket design.[43][44] In 1944 RNII was renamed Scientific Research Institute No 1 (NII-I) and combined with design bureau OKB-293, led by Soviet engineer Viktor Bolkhovitinov, which developed, with Aleksei Isaev, Boris Chertok, Leonid Voskresensky and Nikolay Pilyugin a short-range rocket powered interceptor called Bereznyak-Isayev BI-1.[45]
Special Design Bureau for Special Engines (OKB-SD) was led by Glushko and focused on developing auxiliary
The third design bureau was
German influence
During World War II Nazi Germany developed rocket technology that was more advanced than the
Sputnik and Vostok
The Soviet space program was tied to the USSR's
Because of its global range and large payload of approximately five tons, the reliable R-7 was not only effective as a strategic delivery system for nuclear warheads, but also as an excellent basis for a space vehicle. The United States' announcement in July 1955 of its plan to launch a satellite during the
After the first Sputnik proved to be a
Funding and support
The Soviet space program was secondary in military funding to the Strategic Rocket Forces' ICBMs. While the West believed that Khrushchev personally ordered each new space mission for propaganda purposes, and the Soviet leader did have an unusually close relationship with Korolev and other chief designers, Khrushchev emphasized missiles rather than space exploration and was not very interested in competing with Apollo.[58]: 351, 408, 426–427
While the government and the Communist Party used the program's successes as propaganda tools after they occurred, systematic plans for missions based on political reasons were rare, one exception being
Internal competition
Unlike the American space program, which had NASA as a single coordinating structure directed by its administrator,
Yangel had been Korolev's assistant but with the support of the military, he was given his own design bureau in 1954 to work primarily on the military space program. This had the stronger rocket engine design team including the use of
Glushko was the chief rocket engine designer but he had a personal friction with Korolev and refused to develop the large single chamber cryogenic engines that Korolev needed to build heavy boosters.
Chelomey benefited from the patronage of Khrushchev[58]: 418 and in 1960 was given the plum job of developing a rocket to send a crewed vehicle around the Moon and a crewed military space station. With limited space experience, his development was slow.
The progress of the Apollo program alarmed the chief designers, who each advocated for his own program as the response. Multiple, overlapping designs received approval, and new proposals threatened already approved projects. Due to Korolev's "singular persistence", in August 1964—more than three years after the United States declared its intentions—the Soviet Union finally decided to compete for the Moon. It set the goal of a lunar landing in 1967—the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution—or 1968.[58]: 406–408, 420 At one stage in the early 1960s the Soviet space program was actively developing multiple launchers and spacecraft. With the fall of Krushchev in 1964, Korolev was given complete control of the crewed program.[62][63]
In 1961, Valentin Bondarenko, a cosmonaut training for a crewed Vostok mission, was killed in an endurance experiment after the chamber he was in caught on fire. The Soviet Union chose to cover up his death and continue on with the space program.[64]
After Korolev
Korolev died in January 1966 from complications of heart disease and severe hemorrhaging following a routine operation that uncovered
The leadership of the OKB-1 design bureau was given to Vasily Mishin, who had the task of sending a human around the Moon in 1967 and landing a human on it in 1968. Mishin lacked Korolev's political authority and still faced competition from other chief designers. Under pressure, Mishin approved the launch of the Soyuz 1 flight in 1967, even though the craft had never been successfully tested on an uncrewed flight. The mission launched with known design problems and ended with the vehicle crashing to the ground, killing Vladimir Komarov. This was the first in-flight fatality of any space program.[67]
Following this tragedy and under new pressures, Mishin developed a drinking problem. The Soviets were beaten in sending the first crewed flight around the Moon in 1968 by Apollo 8, but Mishin pressed ahead with development of the flawed super heavy N1, in the hope that the Americans would have a setback, leaving enough time to make the N1 workable and land a man on the Moon first. There was a success with the joint flight of Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5 in January 1969 that tested the rendezvous, docking, and crew transfer techniques that would be used for the landing, and the LK lander was tested successfully in earth orbit. But after four uncrewed test launches of the N1 ended in failure, the program was suspended for two years and then cancelled, removing any chance of the Soviets landing men on the Moon before the United States.[68]
Besides the crewed landings, the abandoned Soviet Moon program included the multipurpose moon base Zvezda, first detailed with developed mockups of expedition vehicles[69] and surface modules.[70]
Following this setback, Chelomey convinced Ustinov to approve a program in 1970 to advance his
In contrast with the difficulty faced in its early crewed lunar programs, the USSR found significant success with its remote moon operations, achieving two historical firsts with the automatic
In spite of many other
Program secrecy
The Soviet space program had withheld information on its projects predating the success of
The
The Soviet space program's use of secrecy served as both a tool to prevent the leaking of classified information between countries and also to create a mysterious barrier between the space program and the Soviet populace. The program's nature embodied ambiguous messages concerning its goals, successes, and values. Launchings were not announced until they took place.
However, the military influence over the Soviet space program may be the best explanation for this secrecy. The
The program's public pronouncements were uniformly positive: as far as the people knew, the Soviet space program had never experienced failure. According to historian James Andrews, "With almost no exceptions, coverage of Soviet space exploits, especially in the case of human space missions, omitted reports of failure or trouble".[75]
According to Dominic Phelan in the book Cold War Space Sleuths, "The
Projects and accomplishments
Completed projects
The Soviet space program's projects include:
- Almaz space stations
- Cosmossatellites
- Foton
- Luna– Moon flybys, orbiters, impacts, landers, rovers, sample returns
- Mars probe program
- Meteor meteorological satellites
- Molniya communications satellites
- Mir space station
- Proton satellites
- Phobos Mars probes program
- Salyutspace stations
- Soyuz programspacecraft
- Sputniksatellites
- TKS spacecraft
- Venera – Venus probes program
- Vega program – Venus and comet Halley probes program
- Vostok programspacecraft
- Voskhod programspacecraft
- Zond program
Notable firsts
Two days after the United States announced its intention to launch an
The Soviet space program pioneered many aspects of space exploration:
- 1957: First intercontinental ballistic missile and orbital launch vehicle, the R-7 Semyorka.
- 1957: First satellite, Sputnik 1.
- 1957: First animal in Earth orbit, the dog Laika on Sputnik 2.
- 1959: First rocket ignition in Earth orbit, first man-made object to escape Earth's gravity, Luna 1.
- 1959: First data communications, or telemetry, to and from outer space, Luna 1.
- 1959: First man-made object to pass near the Moon, first man-made object in Heliocentric orbit, Luna 1.
- 1959: First probe to impact the Moon, Luna 2.
- 1959: First images of the Moon's far side, Luna 3.
- 1960: First animals to safely return from Earth orbit, the dogs Belka and Strelka on Sputnik 5.
- 1961: First probe launched to Venus, Venera 1.
- 1961: First person in space (International definition) and in Earth orbit, Yuri Gagarin on Vostok 1, Vostok program.
- 1961: First person to spend over 24 hours in space Gherman Titov, Vostok 2 (also first person to sleep in space).
- 1962: First dual crewed spaceflight, Vostok 4.
- 1962: First probe launched to Mars, Mars 1.
- 1963: First woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova, Vostok 6.
- 1964: First multi-person crew (3), Voskhod 1.
- 1965: First extra-vehicular activity (.
- 1965: First radio telescope in space, Zond 3.
- 1965: First probe to hit another planet of the Solar System (Venus), Venera 3.
- 1966: First probe to make a soft landing on and transmit from the surface of the Moon, Luna 9.
- 1966: First probe in lunar orbit, Luna 10.
- 1966: Molniya 1.[81]
- 1967: First uncrewed rendezvous and docking, Cosmos 188.
- 1968: First living beings to reach the Moon (circumlunar flights) and return unharmed to Earth, Russian tortoises and other lifeforms on Zond 5.
- 1969: First docking between two crewed craft in Earth orbit and exchange of crews, Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5.
- 1970: First soil samples automatically extracted and returned to Earth from another celestial body, Luna 16.
- 1970: First robotic space rover, Lunokhod 1 on the Moon.
- 1970: First full
- 1971: First space station, Salyut 1.
- 1971: First probe to impact the surface of Mars, Mars 2.
- 1971: First probe to land on Mars, Mars 3.
- 1971: First armed space station, Almaz.
- 1975: First probe to orbit Venus, to make a soft landing on Venus, first photos from the surface of Venus, Venera 9.
- 1980: First Asian person in space, Vietnamese Cosmonaut
- 1984: First Indian Astronaut in space, Rakesh Sharma on Soyuz T-11 (Salyut-7 space station).
- 1984: First woman to walk in space, Svetlana Savitskaya (Salyut 7space station).
- 1986: First crew to visit two separate space stations (Mir and Salyut 7).
- 1986: First probes to deploy robotic balloons into Venus atmosphere and to return pictures of a comet during close flyby Vega 1, Vega 2.
- 1986: First permanently crewed space station, Mir, 1986–2001, with a permanent presence on board (1989–1999).
- 1987: First crew to spend over one year in space, Vladimir Titov and Musa Manarov on board of Soyuz TM-4 – Mir.
- 1988: First fully automated flight of a spaceplane (Buran).
Incidents, failures, and setbacks
Accidents and cover-ups
The Soviet space program experienced a number of fatal incidents and failures.[82]
The first official cosmonaut fatality during training occurred on March 23, 1961, when Valentin Bondarenko died in a fire within a low pressure, high oxygen atmosphere.
On April 23, 1967, Soyuz 1 crashed into the ground at 90 mph (140 km/h) due to a parachute failure, killing Vladimir Komarov. Komarov's death was the first in-flight fatality in the history of spaceflight.[83][84]
The Soviets continued striving for the first lunar mission with the huge
In 1971, the Soyuz 11 mission to stay at the Salyut 1 space station resulted in the deaths of three cosmonauts when the reentry capsule depressurized during preparations for reentry. This accident resulted in the only human casualties to occur in space (beyond 100 km (62 mi), as opposed to the high atmosphere). The crew members aboard Soyuz 11 were Vladislav Volkov, Georgy Dobrovolsky, and Viktor Patsayev.
On April 5, 1975, Soyuz 7K-T No.39, the second stage of a Soyuz rocket carrying two cosmonauts to the Salyut 4 space station malfunctioned, resulting in the first crewed launch abort. The cosmonauts were carried several thousand miles downrange and became worried that they would land in China, which the Soviet Union was having difficult relations with at the time. The capsule hit a mountain, sliding down a slope and almost slid off a cliff; however, the parachute lines snagged on trees and kept this from happening. As it was, the two suffered severe injuries and the commander, Lazarev, never flew again.
On March 18, 1980, a
In August 1981, Kosmos 434, which had been launched in 1971, was about to re-enter. To allay fears that the spacecraft carried nuclear materials, a spokesperson from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USSR assured the Australian government on 26 August 1981, that the satellite was "an experimental lunar cabin". This was one of the first admissions by the Soviet Union that it had ever engaged in a crewed lunar spaceflight program.[58]: 736
In September 1983, a Soyuz rocket being launched to carry cosmonauts to the Salyut 7 space station exploded on the pad, causing the Soyuz capsule's abort system to engage, saving the two cosmonauts on board.[86]
Buran
The Soviet
Polyus satellite
The
Canceled projects
Energia rocket
The
Interplanetary projects
Mars missions
- Heavy rover Mars 4NM was going to be launched by the abandoned N1launcher between 1974 and 1975.
- Mars Mars 5NMwas going to be launched by a single N1 launcher in 1975.
- Mars sample return mission Mars 5M or (Mars-79) was to be double launched in parts by Proton launchers, and then joined in orbit for flight to Mars in 1979.[citation needed]
Vesta
The
Tsiolkovsky
The Tsiolkovsky mission was planned as a double-purposed deep interplanetary probe to be launched in the 1990s to make a "sling shot" flyby of Jupiter and then pass within five or seven radii of the Sun. A derivative of this spacecraft would possibly be launched toward Saturn and beyond.[94]
See also
- DRAKON, an algorithmic visual programming language developed for the Buran space project.
- Intercosmos, a Soviet space program designed to give nations on friendly relations with the Soviet Union access to crewed and uncrewed space missions
- List of Russian aerospace engineers
- List of Russian explorers
- List of space disasters
- Pilot-Cosmonaut of the USSR, an honorary title
- Russian Federation
- Roscosmos Cosmonaut Corps, Russian astronaut corps
- Sheldon names, which were used to identify launch vehicles of the Soviet Union when their Soviet names were unknown in the USA
- Soviet rocketry
- Space Race
- Tank on the Moon, a 2007 French documentary film on the Lunokhod program
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