Soviet space program

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Soviet space program

Космическая программа СССР Kosmicheskaya programma SSSR
Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin in Sweden, the first man in space
Formed	1950s
Dissolved	December 25, 1991
Manager	Sergei Korolev (1950s–1966) Vasily Mishin (1966–1974) Valentin Glushko (1974–1989)
First flight	Sputnik 1 October 4, 1957–January 4, 1958
First crewed flight	Vostok 1 April 12, 1961
Last flight	December 1991
Last crewed flight	Soyuz TM-13 October 2, 1991–March 25, 1992

The Soviet space program (Russian: Космическая программа СССР, romanized: Kosmicheskaya programma SSSR) was the national space program of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), conducted in competition with its Cold War adversary the United States, known as the Space Race from the mid-1950s until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. It consisted of the development of expendable launch vehicles, uncrewed artificial satellites starting in 1953, and several human spaceflight programs.^[1]

Over its 38-year history, the Soviet program achieved the first intercontinental ballistic missile (R-7), first satellite (Sputnik 1), first animal in Earth orbit (the dog Laika on Sputnik 2), first human in space and Earth orbit (Yuri Gagarin on Vostok 1), first woman in space and Earth orbit (Valentina Tereshkova on Vostok 6), first spacewalk (Alexei Leonov on Voskhod 2), first Moon impact (Luna 2), first image of the far side of the Moon (Luna 3) and uncrewed lunar soft landing (Luna 9), first space rover (Lunokhod 1), first sample of lunar soil automatically extracted and brought to Earth (Luna 16), and first space station (Salyut 1). Further notable records included the first interplanetary probes: Venera 1 and Mars 1 to fly by Venus and Mars, respectively, Venera 3 and Mars 2 to impact the respective planet surface, and Venera 7 and Mars 3 to make soft landings on these planets.^[2]

The rocket and space program of the Soviet Union, which initially employed captured scientists from the V-2 rocket program,^[3][4] was performed mainly by Soviet engineers and scientists after 1955, and was based on some unique Soviet and Imperial Russian theoretical developments, many derived by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, sometimes known as the father of theoretical astronautics.^[5][6] Sergei Korolev was the head of the principal design group; his official title was Chief Designer (a standard title for similar positions in the Soviet Union). Unlike its American competitor, which had NASA as a single coordinating agency, the Soviet space program was split among several competing design bureaus led by Sergei Korolev, Kerim Kerimov, Mikhail Yangel, Valentin Glushko, Vladimir Chelomey, Viktor Makeyev, , etc.^[7]

Because of the program's classified status, and for propaganda value, announcements of the outcomes of missions were delayed until success was certain, and failures were kept secret unless detected by Western tracking stations. Ultimately, as a result of Mikhail Gorbachev's policy of glasnost in the 1980s, many facts about the space program were declassified. Setbacks included the deaths of Korolev, Vladimir Komarov (in the Soyuz 1 crash), and the Soyuz 11 crew between 1966 and 1971, and failure to develop the N-1 super heavy-lift rocket (1968–1974) intended to launch crewed lunar landings.^[8]

With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine inherited the program. Kazakhstan created KazCosmos in the 21st century, Russia created an aerospace agency called Rosaviakosmos, which is now a space agency called Roscosmos,^[9] and Ukraine created the National Space Agency of Ukraine (NSAU).^[10]

Origins[]

Pre-war efforts[]

The theory of space exploration had a solid basis in the Russian Empire before the First World War with the writings of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935), who published pioneering papers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and in 1929 introduced the concept of the multistaged rocket. Practical aspects built on early experiments carried out by members of the reactive propulsion study group, GIRD (founded in 1931) in the 1920s and 1930s, where such pioneers as Ukrainian engineer Sergey Korolev—who dreamed of traveling to Mars^[11]: 5—and the Baltic German engineer Friedrich Zander worked. On August 18, 1933, GIRD launched the first Soviet liquid-fueled rocket ,^[12] and on November 25, 1933, the first hybrid-fueled rocket GIRD-X. In 1940-41 another advance in the reactive propulsion field took place: the development and serial production of the Katyusha^[13] multiple rocket launcher.

The Germans[]

During the 1930s Soviet rocket technology was comparable to Germany's, but Joseph Stalin's Great Purge severely damaged its progress. Many leading engineers were exiled, and Korolev and others were imprisoned in the Gulag.^{[11]: 10–14} Although the Katyusha was very effective on the Eastern Front during World War II, the advanced state of the German rocket program amazed Soviet engineers who inspected its remains at Peenemünde and Mittelwerk after the end of the war in Europe. The Americans had secretly moved most leading German scientists and 100 V-2 rockets to the United States in Operation Paperclip, but the Soviet program greatly benefited from captured German manufacturing tools obtained from the V-2 production sites Mittelwerk in Eastern Germany.^{[11]: 20, 25, 27, 29–31, 56} From July 1945, the Soviets conscripted German scientists and workers for the Institut Nordhausen in Bleicherode to reestablish the lost design drawings and engineering data and to restore the manufacturing and assembly of V-2 components in Germany. This operation was set up by Dimitri Ustinov, Sergei Korolev, Valentin Glushko, and Boris Chertok.^[14] Helmut Gröttrup, a notable expert of control systems from Peenemünde, was appointed general director of Institut Nordhausen, also called Zentralwerke, which grew to more than 5000 employees until October 1946.

On October 22, 1946, Operation Osoaviakhim forcibly removed more than 2,200 German specialists – a total of more than 6,000 people including family members – from the Soviet occupation zone of post-World War II Germany for employment in the Soviet Union. 160 specialists from Institut Nordhausen, headed by Helmut Gröttrup, were held on Gorodomlya Island until 1953. As the first task, they had to support the Soviets in building a replica of the V-2 which was called the R-1 and successfully launched in October 1948.^{[11]: 30, 80–82} The Soviets eventually requested concepts of more powerful boosters for higher payload and range, i.e. nuclear warheads and long-range distance. Therefore, from 1947 to 1950, the German collective proposed concepts for the G-1, G-2 and G-4 with numerous design improvements over the V-2 status:^[15]

• Bundling multiple rocket engines, with the possibility of compensating for an engine failure by shutting down the symmetrically opposed engine (in the later R-7 Semyorka and Sputnik launcher, 4 x 4 for the first stage and 4 engines for the second stage were bundled)
• Vector control of engines by pivoting instead of the complex (and heavy) V-2 vanes made of graphite
• Conical shape of the rocket body for efficient and stable aerodynamics, not requiring elaborate wind tunnel tests for optimization over the entire speed range and associated tank load (later implemented by the R-7)
• Use of tanks as a supporting structure for significant weight reduction
• More precise target control by improved gyro systems, including simulation systems for testing
• Driving turbines with exhaust gas bled from the combustion chamber for higher efficiency (which finally succeeded in the RD-180 design).

Korolev used parts of these proposals for the Soviet developments R-2, R-5 and R-14. In early 1954, the CIA summarized the German concept studies, and Soviet interest therein, based on reports by returned German scientists, among them Fritz Karl Preikschat and Helmut Gröttrup. There was evidence that the Soviets, because of their "love of rocket technology" and "their respect of German work", could well be the first to have long-range missiles.^[16] For political reasons, however, the German impact on the Soviet rocketry and space program has long been underestimated.

The almost eight years of involvement of the German scientists in the Soviet rocketry program proved to be an essential catalyst to its further advancement. During the existence of the USSR, Soviet historians rarely, if ever, mentioned the use of German expertise in the post-war years, but the collaboration was real and extremely pivotal in furthering Soviet goals. [...] Gröttrup's team was indispensable in quickly transferring the database of German achievements to the Soviets, thus providing a strong foundation from which to proceed.

— Asif Azam Siddiqi, Challenge to Apollo: The Soviet Union and the Space Race, 1945–1974

Korolev's OKB-1 design bureau was dedicated to the liquid-fueled cryogenic rockets he had been experimenting with in the late 1930s. Ultimately, this work resulted in the design of the R-7 Semyorka^[17] intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) which was successfully tested in August 1957. This Soviet achievement was based on a strong dedication and strict coordination of all military entities, with Dmitry Ustinov and Sergei Korolev as the main drivers.

Sputnik and Vostok[]

Chief Designer Sergei Korolev (left), with the father of the Soviet atomic bomb Igor Kurchatov, and Chief Theoretician Mstislav Keldysh in 1956

The Soviet space program was tied to the USSR's Five-Year Plans and from the start was reliant on support from the Soviet military. Although he was "single-mindedly driven by the dream of space travel", Korolev generally kept this a secret while working on military projects—especially, after the Soviet Union's first atomic bomb test in 1949, a missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead to the United States—as many mocked the idea of launching satellites and crewed spacecraft. Nonetheless, the first Soviet rocket with animals aboard launched in July 1951; the two dogs were recovered alive after reaching 101 km in altitude. Two months ahead of America's first such achievement, this and subsequent flights gave the Soviets valuable experience with space medicine.^{[11]: 84–88, 95–96, 118}

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 International Geophysical Year greatly benefited Korolev in persuading Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to support his plans. ^{[11]: 148–151} In a letter addressed to Khrushchev, Korolev stressed the necessity of launching a "simple satellite" in order to compete with the American space effort.^[18] Plans were approved for Earth-orbiting satellites (Sputnik) to gain knowledge of space, and four uncrewed military reconnaissance satellites, Zenit. Further planned developments called for a crewed Earth orbit flight by 1964 and an uncrewed lunar mission at an earlier date.

A replica of Sputnik 1

After the first Sputnik proved to be a successful propaganda coup, Korolev—now known publicly only as the anonymous "Chief Designer of Rocket-Space Systems"^{[11]: 168–169}—was charged to accelerate the crewed program, the design of which was combined with the Zenit program to produce the Vostok spacecraft. After Sputnik, Soviet scientists and program leaders envisioned establishing a crewed station to study the effects of zero-gravity and the long term effects on lifeforms in a space environment.^[19] Still influenced by Tsiolkovsky—who had chosen Mars as the most important goal for space travel—in the early 1960s the Soviet program under Korolev created substantial plans for crewed trips to Mars as early as 1968 to 1970. With closed-loop life support systems and electrical rocket engines, and launched from large orbiting space stations, these plans were much more ambitious than America's goal of landing on the Moon.^{[11]: 333–337}

Funding and support[]

The Vostok rocket at the All-Soviet exhibition Center were the first reliable means to transport objects into Earth orbit.^[20]

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.^{[11]: 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 Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space, on Vostok 6 in 1963.^[11]: 351 Missions were planned based on rocket availability or ad hoc reasons, rather than scientific purposes. For example, the government in February 1962 abruptly ordered an ambitious mission involving two Vostoks simultaneously in orbit launched "in ten days time" to eclipse John Glenn's Mercury-Atlas 6 that month; the program could not do so until August, with Vostok 3 and Vostok 4.^{[11]: 354–361}

Internal competition[]

Unlike the American space program, which had NASA as a single coordinating structure directed by its administrator, James Webb through most of the 1960s, the USSR's program was split between several competing design groups. Despite the remarkable successes of the Sputniks between 1957 and 1961 and Vostoks between 1961 and 1964, after 1958 Korolev's OKB-1 design bureau faced increasing competition from his rival chief designers, Mikhail Yangel, Valentin Glushko, and Vladimir Chelomei. Korolev planned to move forward with the Soyuz craft and N-1 heavy booster that would be the basis of a permanent crewed space station and crewed exploration of the Moon. However, Dmitry Ustinov directed him to focus on near-Earth missions using the Voskhod spacecraft, a modified Vostok, as well as on uncrewed missions to nearby planets Venus and Mars.

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 hypergolic fuels but following the Nedelin catastrophe in 1960 Yangel was directed to concentrate on ICBM development. He also continued to develop his own heavy booster designs similar to Korolev's N-1 both for military applications and for cargo flights into space to build future space stations.

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^[11]: 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.^{[11]: 406–408, 420} At one stage in the early 1960s the Soviet space program was actively developing 30 projects for launchers and spacecraft.^{[citation needed]} With the fall of Krushchev in 1964, Korolev was given complete control of the crewed program.

In 1961, Valentin Bondarenko, a cosmonaut and member of the Vostok Spacecraft, 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.^[21]

After Korolev[]

Launch of a Proton-K

Korolev died in January 1966, following a routine operation that uncovered colon cancer, from complications of heart disease and severe hemorrhaging. Kerim Kerimov,^[22] who was formerly an architect of Vostok 1,^[23] was appointed Chairman of the State Commission on Piloted Flights and headed it for the next 25 years (1966–1991). He supervised every stage of development and operation of both crewed space complexes as well as uncrewed interplanetary stations for the former Soviet Union. One of Kerimov's greatest achievements was the launch of Mir in 1986.

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.

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.

The American and Soviet crews of the Apollo–Soyuz mission

Besides the crewed landings, the abandoned Soviet Moon program included the multipurpose moon base Zvezda, first detailed with developed mockups of expedition vehicles^[24] and surface modules.^[25]

Following this setback, Chelomey convinced Ustinov to approve a program in 1970 to advance his Almaz military space station as a means of beating the US's announced Skylab. Mishin remained in control of the project that became Salyut but the decision backed by Mishin to fly a three-man crew without pressure suits rather than a two-man crew with suits to Salyut 1 in 1971 proved fatal when the re-entry capsule depressurized killing the crew on their return to Earth. Mishin was removed from many projects, with Chelomey regaining control of Salyut. After working with NASA on the Apollo–Soyuz, the Soviet leadership decided a new management approach was needed, and in 1974 the N1 was canceled and Mishin was out of office. The design bureau was renamed NPO Energia with Glushko as chief designer.

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 Lunokhod and the Luna sample return missions. The Mars probe program was also continued with some success, while the explorations of Venus and then of the Halley comet by the Venera and Vega probe programs were more effective.

Program secrecy[]

Communists pave the way to the stars. The Soviet miniature sheet of 1964 displaying six historical firsts of the Soviet space program.

The Soviet space program had withheld information on its projects predating the success of Sputnik, the world's first artificial satellite. In fact, when the Sputnik project was first approved, one of the most immediate courses of action the Politburo took was to consider what to announce to the world regarding their event. The Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS) established precedents for all official announcements on the Soviet space program. The information eventually released did not offer details on who built and launched the satellite or why it was launched. However, the public release is illuminating in what it does reveal: "there is an abundance of arcane scientific and technical data... as if to overwhelm the reader with mathematics in the absence of even a picture of the object".^[26] What remains of the release is the pride for Soviet cosmonautics and the vague hinting of future possibilities then available after Sputnik's success.

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. The program itself was so secret that a regular Soviet citizen could never achieve a concrete image of it, but rather a superficial picture of its history, present activities, or future endeavors. Launchings were not announced until they took place. Cosmonaut names were not released until they flew. Mission details were sparse. Outside observers did not know the size or shape of their rockets or cabins or most of their spaceships, except for the first Sputniks, lunar probes and Venus probe.^[27]

Mir in 1996 as seen from Space Shuttle Columbia during STS-76.

However, the military influence over the Soviet space program may be the best explanation for this secrecy. The OKB-1 was subordinated under the Ministry of General Machine Building,^[26] tasked with the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles, and continued to give its assets random identifiers into the 1960s: "For example, the Vostok spacecraft was referred to as 'object IIF63' while its launch rocket was 'object 8K72K'".^[26] Soviet defense factories had been assigned numbers rather than names since 1927. Even these internal codes were obfuscated: in public, employees used a separate code, a set of special post-office numbers, to refer to the factories, institutes, and departments.

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".^[26]

"The USSR was famously described by Winston Churchill as 'a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma' and nothing signified this more than the search for the truth behind its space program during the Cold War. Although the Space Race was literally played out above our heads, it was often obscured by a figurative 'space curtain' that took much effort to see through"^[27] says Dominic Phelan in the book Cold War Space Sleuths (Springer-Praxis 2013).

List of projects and accomplishments[]

The Vostok 1 capsule which carried Yuri Gagarin on the first crewed space flight, now on display at the RKK Energiya museum outside of Moscow.

Completed projects[]

The Soviet space program's projects include:

Notable firsts[]

The first image of the far side of the Moon returned by Luna 3.

Mars 3, the first spacecraft to land on Mars.

Two days after the United States announced its intention to launch an artificial satellite, on July 31, 1955, the Soviet Union announced its intention to do the same. Sputnik 1 was launched on October 4, 1957, beating the United States and stunning people all over the world.^[28]

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 3 and 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 (EVA), by Alexsei Leonov,^[29] Voskhod 2.
• 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: first image of the whole Earth disk, Molniya 1.^[30]
• 1967: First uncrewed rendezvous and docking, Cosmos 186/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 interplanetary travel with a soft landing and useful data transmission. Data received from the surface of another planet of the Solar System (Venus), Venera 7
• 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 Hispanic and Black person in space, Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez on Soyuz 38.
• 1984: First woman to walk in space, Svetlana Savitskaya (Salyut 7 space 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).

Canceled projects[]

Buran at airshow (1989).

NASA artwork of Polyus with the Energia rocket.

Buran[]

The Soviet Buran program attempted to produce a class of spaceplanes launched from the Energia rocket, in response to the US Space Shuttle. It was intended to operate in support of large space-based military platforms as a response to the Strategic Defense Initiative. Buran only had orbital maneuvering engines, unlike the Space Shuttle, Buran did not fire engines during launch, instead relying entirely on Energia to lift it out of the atmosphere. It copied the airframe and thermal protection system design of the US Space Shuttle Orbiter, with a maximum payload of 30 metric tons (slightly higher than that of the Space Shuttle), and weighed less.^[31] It also had the capability to land autonomously. Due to this, some retroactively consider it to be the more capable launch vehicle.^[32] By the time the system was ready to fly in orbit in 1988, strategic arms reduction treaties made Buran redundant. On November 15, 1988, Buran and its Energia rocket were launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, and after two orbits in three hours, glided to a landing a few miles from its launch pad.^[33] While the craft survived that re-entry, the heat shield was not reusable. This failure resulted from United States counter intelligence efforts.^[34] After this test flight, the Soviet Ministry of Defense would defund the program, considering it relatively pointless compared to its price.^[35]

Polyus satellite[]

The Polyus satellite was a prototype orbital weapons platform designed to destroy Strategic Defense Initiative satellites with a megawatt carbon-dioxide laser.^[36] Launched mounted upside-down on its Energia rocket, its single flight test was a failure when the inertial guidance system failed to rotate it 180° and instead rotated a complete 360°.^[37]

Energia rocket[]

The Energia was a successfully developed super heavy-lift launch vehicle which burned liquid hydrogen fuel. With no payload to launch, the Energia was also canceled on dissolution of the USSR.

Interplanetary projects[]

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Mars missions[]

• Heavy rover Mars 4NM was going to be launched by the abandoned N1 launcher between 1974 and 1975.
• Mars sample return mission Mars 5NM was 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 together in orbit for flight to Mars in 1979.^[38]

Vesta[]

The Vesta mission would have consisted of two identical double-purposed interplanetary probes to be launched in 1991. It was intended to fly-by Mars (instead of an early plan to Venus) and then study four asteroids belonging to different classes. At 4 Vesta a penetrator would be released.

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.^[39]

Incidents, failures, and setbacks[]

The Soviet space program experienced a number of fatal incidents and failures.^[40]

The Nedelin catastrophe in 1960 was a massive explosion of a fueled rocket being tested on the launch pad, killing many technical personnel, aerospace engineers, and technicians working on the project at the time of the explosion.

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.

The Voskhod program was canceled after two crewed flights owing to the change of Soviet leadership and nearly fatal 'close calls' during the second mission. Had the planned further flights gone ahead they could have given the Soviet space program further 'firsts' including a long-duration flight of 20 days, a spacewalk by a woman and an untethered spacewalk.^{[citation needed]}

The Soviets continued striving for the first lunar mission with the huge N-1 rocket, which exploded on each of four uncrewed tests shortly after launch. The Americans won the race to land men on the Moon with Apollo 11 on July 20, 1969.

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, , 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 then having difficult relations with. 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 Vostok rocket exploded on its launch pad during a fueling operation, killing 48 people.^[41]

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.^[11]: 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.

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
• Roscosmos, the program's eventual post-Soviet continuation under the Russian Federation
• List of space disasters
• Pilot-Cosmonaut of the USSR, an honorary title
• Sheldon names, which were used to identify launch vehicles of the Soviet Union when their Soviet names were unknown in the USA
• Tank on the Moon, a 2007 French documentary film on the Lunokhod program

References[]

Bibliography[]

• Andrews, James T.: Red Cosmos: K. E. Tsiolkovskii, Grandfather of Soviet Rocketry. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2009)
• Brzezinski, Matthew: Red Moon Rising: Sputnik and the Hidden Rivalries that Ignited the Space Age. (Holt Paperbacks, 2008)
• Burgess, Colin; French, Francis: Into That Silent Sea: Trailblazers of the Space Era, 1961–1965. (University of Nebraska Press, 2007)
• Burgess, Colin; French, Francis: In the Shadow of the Moon: A Challenging Journey to Tranquility, 1965–1969. (University of Nebraska Press, 2007)
• Harford, James: Korolev: How One Man Masterminded the Soviet Drive to Beat America to the Moon. (John Wiley & Sons, 1997)
• Siddiqi, Asif A.: Challenge to Apollo: The Soviet Union and the Space Race, 1945–1974. (Washington, D.C.: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 2000)
• Siddiqi, Asif A.: The Red Rockets' Glare: Spaceflight and the Soviet Imagination, 1857–1957. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010)
• Siddiqi, Asif A.; Andrews, James T. (eds.): Into the Cosmos: Space Exploration and Soviet Culture. (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011)

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