Scientific and applications programs

Abstract

Manned spaceflight has always been the most dramatic, visible part of the space program. Unmanned programs, though less glamorous, have often brought greater benefits to ordinary citizens, be that through communications, weather forecasting or navigation. During the heyday of the Soviet space program, the Russians ran a broad range of unmanned programs, ranging from communications to weather satellites, missions with monkeys to materials-processing, Earth observations to space science. With the financial contraction of the 1990s, these programs were inevitably reduced in scale. Here we look at how Russia managed to adapt these programs to a very different financial environment. We start with the original Soviet applications program: communications satellites.