Exactly 60 years ago, humanity entered a new era. It entered literally a few moments after the first "squeaks" signals that came through the communication channels from the near-earth orbit. This squeaked the brainchild of the mind of outstanding Soviet scientists, the brainchild of virtually all, no matter how pompous it may sound, humanity. The squeak, for obvious reasons, made a splash in the world. The Western, as they say now, partners of the Soviet Union were not particularly happy about the signals.
Exactly 60 years ago, on October 4, 1957, the Sputnik launch vehicle, created on the basis of the R-7 intercontinental ballistic missile, launched the first artificial Earth satellite into its design orbit. The launch was carried out from the 5th test site of the USSR Ministry of Defense "Tyura-Tam". Today this test site is known all over the world as the Baikonur cosmodrome - one of those places that are directly related to space exploration.
The era of astronautics, which started 6 decades ago, made our country a pioneer in space exploration, one of the leading space powers, and now largely determines the strategy of national security and defense. After all, it is not for nothing that on October 4, Russia annually celebrates the Day of Space Forces - troops that literally look beyond the cosmic horizons to ensure the inviolability of the country's borders.
Every day, specialists from the Space Control Center of the Space Forces, which are part of the Russian Aerospace Forces, carry out large-scale monitoring of space objects and potential threats. The number of measurements carried out and processed by the military personnel of the Central Command and Control Commission within 24 hours is about 60 thousand! This work allows for the informational support of the main catalog of space objects, as well as control of spacecraft launches through the Ministry of Defense.
In the second half of August, the specialists of the Center accepted for escort a spacecraft that was in orbit after being launched by the Proton-M launch vehicle. By and large, this is a significant event, since for many months the flights of the Protons were actually frozen due to problems identified in the engines of the second and third stages. Experts from the Voronezh Mechanical Plant, according to Roscosmos, promised to eliminate the defects identified in all rocket engines produced recently by the end of the year.
By the way, in August of this year, another significant event took place, which is directly connected not only with astronautics, but also specifically with the launch of the 1st artificial Earth satellite into orbit. Astronomers have decided in honor of PS-1 ("The simplest satellite-1") to name the site of such a celestial body as Pluto, which for some time has ceased to be considered a planet in the classical sense of this term. The International Astronomical Union (IAU) immortalized the first Soviet satellite in the name of the Plutonian Plain.
Returning to the activities of the space forces and their work on maintaining the main catalog of space objects, it is necessary to touch upon the issues of the contents of this object in more detail. The catalog is a gigantic database with coordinate and non-coordinate information about space and subspace objects of artificial nature, recorded at heights from 120 thousand meters to 50 thousand km.
The main catalog is intended for long-term storage of orbital measuring, optical, radio engineering and special information about space objects of artificial origin. At the same time, the special equipment of the Russian Space Control Center makes it possible to determine and track approximately 1,500 different indicators and parameters of an object: from its angular velocity to mass, size, type and place in the classifier list.
The space forces are actively working on adopting the latest weapons and special equipment. In particular, we are talking about the new generation Voronezh radar stations, which have impressive characteristics in terms of tracking accuracy and coverage of the monitoring space. By 2020, it is planned to put into operation the 11th (the last of the planned) Voronezh radar, capable of detecting both space and aerodynamic objects, including cruise and ballistic missiles. We are talking about the object "Voronezh-SM", which will appear on the territory of Sevastopol.
Space forces today use the spacecraft of the Unified Space System, which is the basis of the space echelon of the missile attack warning system. It can significantly reduce the detection time of ballistic missile launches, and in this matter, literally every fraction of a second matters.
On this significant day, Voennoye Obozreniye congratulates all servicemen of the Russian space forces on the holiday. On the same day, one cannot fail to honor the memory of all those outstanding Soviet scientists and engineers who stood at the origins of Russian cosmonautics, which declared itself by satellite signals on October 4, 1957.
