The first generation of navigation satellite systems in the Soviet Union received the name "Sail" and was developed on the basis of the Scientific Research Hydrographic Navigation Institute (NIGSHI) of the Navy. The very idea to use artificial earth satellites as the main element of navigation came to the former naval navigator Vadim Alekseevich Fufaev in 1955. Under the leadership of the ideological inspirer, an initiative group was created in NIGSHI, which was engaged in the distance determination of coordinates. The second direction was the topic of Doppler determination of coordinates under the leadership of V. P. Zakolodyazhny, and the third group was responsible for goniometric determination of coordinates - the head of the direction was E. F. Suvorov. By the early 1960s, the appearance of the first domestic LEO global navigation satellite system was developed. In addition to NIGSHI, employees of the NII-4 of the Ministry of Defense took an active part in the project. It was assumed that the ships of the Soviet Navy would be the very first "users" of satellite navigation. However, everything suddenly stopped - the program was sharply limited in funding and actually froze. Intelligence about the final stage of development of a similar system in the camp of a potential adversary - the United States - became the "roast cock". By 1963, the Americans had actually commissioned the Transit satellite system, and on January 15, 1964, the government decided to create a Soviet analogue under the Cyclone code (some sources mention the breathtaking name Cyclone-B).
From that moment on, the semi-underground work of the initiative groups became the official state program. OKB-10 became the main developer of the system, Mikhail Fedorovich Reshetnev was appointed "chief", and the Research Institute of Parting Engineering (NIIP) was responsible for the radio equipment. At the level of sketches, the project was ready by July 1966, and at the same time test bases were approved - the oceanographic vessel "Nikolai Zubov" with submarines B-88, B-36 and B-73.
The ship "Nikolay Zubov". Source: kik-sssr.ru
The first domestic operating navigation spacecraft was Kosmos-192 (the launch vehicle was Kosmos-3M), launched on November 25, 1967 from the Plesetsk cosmodrome. The next was "Kosmos - 220", sent into low orbit on May 7, 1968, "Kosmos - 292" (August 14, 1969) and "Kosmos-332" (April 11, 1970). The tests ended by the summer of 1970 and found the following accuracy: based on the Doppler effect - 1.5 km, the rangefinder system - 1.8 km, and the heading system correction was 3-4 arc minutes.
Model of the satellite of the "Cyclone" system. Source: wikipedia.ru
Spacecraft of the Parus system. Source: gazetamir.ru
The orbital altitude of the satellites was 1000 kilometers - they were typical low-orbit vehicles with a period of 105 minutes around the planet. To the equatorial plane, the inclination of the orbits of the spacecraft of the Kosmos series was 830, which made them circumpolar satellites. After six years of trial operation of four navigation satellites in September 1976, the system was put into service under the name "Parus". By that time, the accuracy of determining the coordinates of the vessel on the move was 250 meters, and in the port at the mooring lines - about 60 meters. The system was quite efficient - the time for determining the location was within 6-15 minutes. The key difference between the domestic development and the American Transit was the possibility of radiotelegraph communication between ships and submarines of the Navy with command posts and with each other. Communication was provided both in conditions of joint radio visibility, and in the option of transferring a message from one subscriber to another, that is, on a global scale. In the latter case, the communication delay was 2-3 hours. Thus was born the world's first navigation-communication satellite system "Parus", which turned navigation in the Soviet fleet upside down. For the first time, it became possible to determine one's own location regardless of the weather, time of day or year anywhere in the World Ocean. This system is still functioning.
In 1979, the Cicada system was commissioned to service civilian ships, devoid of military navigation equipment and communication options. Two years earlier, the icebreaker Artika, based on satellite navigation data, reached the North Pole for the first time in the world for sea vessels. An orbital group of four satellites was dispatched for "Tsikada", and the military "Parus" at different times had an average of 6-7 spacecraft in low orbit. The installation of the COSPAS-SARSAT rescue equipment, or, as it is also called, the Nadezhda system, developed in the Omsk association Polet, has become a serious modernization of the Cicada. The rescue system appeared after the signing on November 23, 1979 of an intergovernmental agreement between the USSR, the USA, Canada and France on the development of COSPAS - Space Search System for Emergency Vessels, SARSAT - Search And Rescue Satellite-Aided Tracking. The system was supposed to be responsible for finding aircraft and ships in distress. The points for receiving information from satellites were originally located in Moscow, Novosibirsk, Arkhangelsk, Vladivostok (USSR), San Francisco, St. Louis, Alaska (USA), Ottawa (Canada), Toulouse (France) and Tromsø (Norway). Each satellite, flying over the surface of the Earth, received signals from a circular area with a diameter of 6,000 km. The minimum number of satellites required for reliable reception of signals from emergency beacons was four. Since at that time no one, except the USA and the USSR, could make such equipment, it was these two countries that provided the COSPAS-SARSAT orbital group. The satellites received the signal of the person in distress, relayed it to the ground point, where they determined his coordinates with an accuracy of 3.5 km and within an hour made a decision on the rescue operation.
COSPAS-SARSAT emblem until 1992. wikipedia.ru
Illustration of the principle of operation of COSPAS-SARSAT. Source: seaman-sea.ru
It was the Soviet satellite with the Nadezhda equipment in September 1982 that recorded the first distress signal from a light-engine aircraft that crashed in the mountains in western Canada. As a result, three Canadian citizens were evacuated - this is how the international project COSPAS-SARSAT opened an account of saved souls. It is worth recalling that a similar story was born in the midst of the Cold War - in 1983 Reagan officially called the USSR the "Evil Empire", and COSPAS-SARSAT is still functioning and has already saved about 4,000 people.
Domestic apparatus "Nadezhda" of the international system COSPAS-SARSAT. Source: seaman-sea.ru
The need to develop a medium-orbit navigation system, necessary not only for the "sea", but also for aviation with "infantry", was discussed in the USSR as early as 1966. The result was the research work "Forecast" under the leadership of Yu. I. Maksyuta, in accordance with which in 1969 they argued the possibility of launching navigation satellites into the middle orbit of the Earth. In the future, this project was called GLONASS and was created with the participation of a large number of organizations - the Krasnoyarsk Design Bureau of Applied Mechanics, the Moscow Research Institute of Instrument Engineering and the Leningrad Scientific Research Radio Engineering Institute (LNIRTI). The Soviet Union launched the first GLONASS satellite into space on October 12, 1983, and in 1993, the system was adopted in Russia, albeit in a truncated version. And only by 1995, GLONASS was brought up to a full-time staff of 24 vehicles, the ground infrastructure was improved and navigation was 100% operational. At that time, the accuracy of determining the coordinates was 15-25 meters, the determination of the velocity components (new option) was 5-6.5 cm / s, and the domestic equipment could determine the time with an accuracy of 0.25-0.5 μs. But within six years the orbital constellation was reduced to 5 satellites and everything was ready for the complete elimination of the Russian satellite navigation system. The rebirth took place in August 2001, when the government of the Russian Federation adopted the federal target program "Global Navigation System", intended to a certain extent to compete with GPS. But that's a slightly different story.
