Earth Orbit Tracking in the USSR/Russia
1981-1987
CHAPTER 4—SUPPORT SERVICES
GROUND-BASED SUPPORT
THE KALININGRAD SPACE FLIGHT CONTROL CENTER (TSUP)
The work of the Flight Control Center (FCC) was described in an article by A. Militsin, FCC chief. (1) The ballistics data computing system operates first to compute an accurate launch time and desired parameters for orbit-injection. Estimated data on the actual orbit is received several minutes after the launch and in 10 to 15 minute predictions for the ballistic lifetime of the spacecraft and proposals for orbit corrections are produced. The coordinates of emergency landing areas are determined. During the flight the ballistics data computing complex provides the input data necessary for organizing all flight control operations, calculating the time and duration of engine firings, the orientations needed to perform the different flight tasks, and how the command, control and communications stations should track the spacecraft.
The greatest volume of data received comes from telemetry. Eight-hundred thousand units of information were received daily from the Salyut 6-Soyuz complex and processed by the data computing complex. This was said to be equivalent to "the complete text of an edition of Aviatsiya i Kosmonavtika every second." (2) Data output from 150 channels is sent to 500 monitor consoles where specialists can retrieve the desired information on a display screen by pressing a maximum of two keys. On-line command communications consoles provide both individual and collective communications for the specialists. It was said that space flight chiefs, the communications chief and duty shift chiefs have direct communication with the crew and that their working places were also equipped with television camera transmitters. As a rule the chief operators are cosmonauts training for subsequent flights.
Balayan's technical memorandum, cited previously, gives a detailed account of the FCC, organization of work in the control room, control room operational support, and the training of control personnel. (3)
An illustrated booklet giving a general description of the Kaliningrad Spaceflight Center near Moscow, where orbiting and interplanetary spacecraft are monitored and controlled, was published in 1985. (4) As well as engaging in the actual flight control of spacecraft, the staff also carry out scientific investigations and develop methods and algorithms for solving flight control problems.
The FCC monitors the work and condition of the crew of piloted spacecraft via onboard and ground equipment, programming their operation. Programs are developed by gathering, processing and analyzing information about the condition of all elements of spacecraft and ground equipment. Telemetry transmitters (about 1,000on the spacecraft and more than 2,000 in the Center) produce readings 100 times a second.
In the control process, the FCC performs operational guidance of the flight and coordinates the operation of a network of ground-based tracking stations, the space support fleet of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, and ballistic centers. It interacts with the launching and recovery complexes, training-simulation facilities, and various other flight support organizations.
It reports both the date and the exact time of launch to the cosmodrome and, until the spacecraft is injected into orbit, receives telemetry information from the cosmodrome about the condition of the spacecraft's onboard systems and the health of the cosmonauts,
television pictures from the launch site and the onboard TV cameras, communications between the cosmonauts and launch control, data on the progress of pre-launch preparations and the launch itself when it occurs.
During the flight, the FCC maintains communication with remote ground and floating stations with the aid of communication satellites. It specifies raw data for tracking stations to compute look-angles in azimuth and elevation when the spacecraft is above their radio horizons. Ballistics determine the orbital parameters of the spacecraft on the basis of radio measurements received from the tracking stations. Several hundred communication channels guarantee effective interaction of control groups simultaneously on several subjects.
A common timing system synchronizes operation of the FCC's computers. High precision of time-keeping (Moscow Standard Time, Greenwich Mean Time, Universal Coordinated Time, etc.) is guaranteed by a permanent link to the State Standard Time for radio and television channels.
A complex of tele-optical projection equipment, an alpha-numeric display controlled automatically by a system with an output of 1.5 million operations per second, guarantees the versatility and clarity of the large screen displays of generalized information about the flight path.
The performance of the spacecraft's onboard systems is evaluated by real-time processing some 3,000 telemetry parameters displayed in various forms for the controllers. During a communication session, information is received at a rate of approximately 500 kilobytes per second. Telemetry data processing, ballistic and command-program calculations are made using "El'brus" multiprocessing computer systems with 2,000 megabytes of internal and external storage.
Visual display units provide the data necessary for the controllers during operation. These include the results of ballistic- navigation calculations, telemetry data on the operating conditions of on-board systems and scientific equipment, and various types of reference information. The communication system makes it possible to carry on conversations both with the individual specialists and a group of subscribers. Individual specialist workstations are provided with equipment for space-video communication.
At the close of each communication session, the FCC's specialists remain at their consoles until the results of the session are analyzed and all reports have been received by the shift Flight Director.
Television shots from within the FCC appear from time to time, such as at the launch of the two Vega spacecraft and the launch of a crew with a foreign cosmonaut. During the summer of 1987, a team from the BBC's Children's TV program, "Blue Peter," who were making a series of features about the Soviet Union, were permitted to visit the Kaliningrad FCC. Presenter Yvette Fielding and BBC veteran space correspondent Reg Turnill were shown around the Center by Cosmonaut Vladimir Solovyev, Deputy Flight Director for the Soyuz TM-2/TM-3 mission. During their five-hour visit they received a special message to the young viewers of their program from Cosmonauts Romanenko and Aleksandrov onboard the Mir orbital station. (5) Turnill said that there appeared to be a team of 25 in the shift, approximately equal numbers of either sex and that, for much of the time, two or three consoles only were occupied between communications sessions. (6)
With the appearance of the Mir orbital station, Kettering Group members who were monitoring the voice communications between the cosmonauts and the ground noticed a departure from the long-established calling-up routine. In piloted missions to the Salyut stations, the cosmonauts would usually begin a communication session by calling " Zaria" (Dawn), the call sign of the control center. Romanenko and Laveikin, on Mir in 1987, used the new call-sign, which sounded like "Soup," heard occasionally in 1986 from Kizim and Solovyev. This is, in fact, the pronunciation of the initial letters "TsUP" for "Tsentr Upravleniya Poletom" or FCC.
THE GROUND AUTOMATED CONTROL COMPLEX (NAKU FORMERLY THE
KIK)
The "Nazemniy Avtomatizirovanniy Kompleks Upravleniya" (NAKU) is the basic complex, universal to all types of spacecraft, of permanent and mobile systems and resources for exchanging command, telemetric and trajectory information with spacecraft, and resources for communication and automated collection and processing of information, together with necessary software, and intended to control all spacecraft functioning in space. (7)
A rudimentary command-measurement complex (KIK) encompassing the entire territory of the Soviet Union had been established in the 6 months prior to the launch of the first sputnik in 1957. Due to the relative simplicity of the early sputniks, the initial tasks of the KIK were comparatively simple. In the second phase, the KIK began to provide backup for the operation of space objects in orbital flight. The 1983 KIK was "a complicated, multifunctional, technically unique, automated control complex for controlling all of the Soviet space apparatuses, vehicles and stations in active existence in space." (8) Tamkovich disclosed that occasionally, in order to ensure uninterrupted communications with spacecraft on especially important parts of the flight, if it could not be done by ground stations or if it were impossible or inexpedient to use ships, aircraft were used. (9) Elsewhere he wrote that the main task of the KIK, during the first revolution of a piloted spacecraft, "was the monitoring of the lift-off into orbit, deployment of antennas and solar battery panels, as well as checking on the state of the cosmonauts' physical well-being and functioning of onboard systems, while on the second revolution they begin testing the spacecraft orientation systems and preparations for the first maneuver." (10)
The 1985 encyclopedia reproduces an organizational chart. A central command post (TsKP) has two-way interaction with the ballistic centers (BTs) and the telemetric processing center, which have a two-way link with the communication and data transmission sub-system, and the central spacecraft control point (TsPU) for automated spacecraft or the FCC (TsUP) for piloted spacecraft. Two-way links between the communication and data transmission sub-system provide control of ground resources from the TsKP and spacecraft control from the TsPU or TsUP. Control is linked from the communication and data transmission sub-system to the ground-based (KIP, formerly NIP) and ship command and measuring stations (KKIP) and measurements are returned to the communication and data transmission sub-system from the KIPs and KIPPs, and from airborne measuring stations. There is a telemetry link from the spacecraft to the airborne measuring stations and two-way telemetry, radio orbit control, command information and communication links between the spacecraft and the KIPs and KKIPs. (11)
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