Plesetsk Cosmodrome
62.8 N 40.7 E
Overview, Supporting Facilities and Launch Vehicles of the
Soviet Space Program *
1976-1980
1. Prepared by the late Charles S. Sheldon II and Geoffrey E. Perry M.B.E. Dr. Sheldon [1917-1981] was the Senior Specialist in Space and Transportation Technology, Mr. Perry [1927-2000] was a Senior Teacher at Kettering Boys School, England, and the leader of the Kettering Group of amateur satellite observers.
LAUNCH SITES IN THE SOVIET UNION
The Soviet Union has three collections of space launch pads, just as does the United States. Curiously, even the functions of these three locations have a similarity, which will be detailed in the sections to follow.
PLESETSK
The second of the Soviet launch sites is near the town of Plesetsk on the railway from Moscow to Archangel at about 62.8 N. latitude, 40.1 E. longitude in European Russia. This site has never been specifically acknowledged. It is finding increasingly heavy use, primarily as an operational site, in contrast to the often experimental or specialized nature of the Tyuratam flights.
Plesetsk is in effect the Vandenberg Air Force Base ( Western Test Range) of the Soviet Union. From here are launched many of the navigation satellites, the weather satellites, and the majority of the military satellites for a wide range of purposes. Since mid-1977, most of the Molniya class inclined orbit communications satellites which previously were launched from Tyuratam have also been launched from Plesetsk. With its northern location, Plesetsk is used for missions which require coverage of extensive parts of Earth, since even flights launched due east for maximum payload capacity cover most of the inhabited Earth.
Plesetsk had been discussed in the Western press as a missile launching area. Its later space role presumably was known to Western governments, but the first public disclosure of this space cosmodrome came from the Kettering Grammar School in England. Geoffrey E. Perry published the first clue in April 1966 shortly after the first space launch in March. (13) He published the pinpointed location in November 1966 when flights at different inclinations had established a nodal point of crossing ground traces. (14) As additional kinds of missions were launched from the Plesetsk area, their patterns of orbital inclinations suggested launch pads scattered over a considerable geographic area. Landsat pictures confirmed to the public that Plesetsk was spread over tens of kilometers although not quite as large as the Baykonur Kosmodrome near Tyuratam. (15) A simplified version of Vick's map of the area is given in figure 4.
When weather conditions are just right, an occasional Plesetsk launch has been visible from Sweden and Finland, when the still firing rocket rises above the horizon. The launch of the seventh Meteor-2 satellite on May 14, 1981, was observed from the roof of the Physics Department of the University of Umea, at 2153 GMT. At the time, the Sun was 10 degrees below the horizon at Umea and 8.4 degrees below the horizon at Plesetsk. The rocket entered sunlight at an altitude of 70 km and rose above the horizon of Umea when it reached an altitude of 85 km. The rocket was ob-served as coming up vertically relative to the horizon. As it bent over to the north, staging was observed. (16) Susanne Hultman, a student, took a color photograph which was later published by Aviation Week & Space Technology. (17) The gas plume in the picture is over 100 km in length.
An unexplained launch was observed by people in Sweden on their way to work at 0502 GMT on December 22, 1981. (18) On this occasion a smoke trail persisted for 45 minutes implying a high performance solid propellant with a metallic content consistent with a missile test rather than a satellite launch.
The closest the Soviet Government has come to acknowledging Plesetsk is to permit its use for cooperative Soviet bloc payload launches, one of the first being Interkosmos 8 of 1972. Experts of the countries taking part in the Interkosmos program prepare the scientific apparatus for launching at the cosmodrome. Delegations of national dignitaries are also present at the time of the launch. The delegation at the launch of the Intercosmos-Bulgaria 1300 satellite included the Bulgarian cosmonaut, Georgiy Ivanov. (19)
References:
1. SOVIET SPACE PROGRAMS: 1976-80, SUPPORTING FACILITIES AND LAUNCH VEHICLES, POLITICAL GOALS AND PURPOSES, INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION IN SPACE, ADMINISTRATION, RESOURCE BURDEN, FUTURE OUTLOOK PREPARED AT THE REQUEST OF HON. BOB PACKWOOD, Chairman, COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE, SCIENCE, AND TRANSPORTATION, UNITED STATES SENATE, Part 1, Dec. 1982.
13. Perry, G. E. Flight International, London , Apr. 21, 1966 , p. 670.14. Perry, G. E. Flight International, London , Nov. 10, 1966 , p. 817.
15. Aviation Week, New York , Apr. 8, 1974 , p. 18-20.
16. Lindgren, S., private communication to Sven Grahn , June 10, 1981 .
17. Aviation Week & Space Technology, vol. 116, No. 3, Jan. 18, 1982 , p 46
18. Norrlandska Social Demokraten, Dec. 23, 1981 .
19. Moscow Home Service, 1700 GMT, Aug. 7, 1981 .
NOTES
1. This record is of launch "successes" as defined elsewhere in this study; that is, any
flight which reached at least one Earth orbit, or which escaped from Earth, either to lunar distance, or to enter solar orbit.
2. Not all launch sites have been announced by the launching country, but most
flights can quickly be identified by repetitive use of certain orbital locations. A plot of the ground traces of the "zero revolution" (the initial part of the flight before the Equator is first crossed) will disclose a nodal point which will define that a launch pad is near a certain spot on the surface of the Earth. In occasional instances where a given inclination for an orbit of unknown origin could have come from more than one launch site can still be pinned down by plotting the zero revolution orbital ground trace to observe which launch site falls on this path. In the case of escape missions and geostationary missions, these are already known to have come exclusively from only a few sites ( Cape Canaveral, Tyuratam, Tanegashima, and soon Kourou).
3. The names of launch sites listed are in a sense a kind of shorthand. Plesetsk has never been precisely identified by the U.S.S.R., which refers generally to a northern cosmodrome. The nodal point of the ground traces is near the city of Plesetsk. Tyuratam is officially called the Baykonur Cosmodrome, and the officially listed launch coordinates are several hundred kilometers northwest of the nodal point which is near the railway stop of Tyuratam, and now the growing space city of Leninsk. Vandenberg is the name of an air force base in California near Lompoc, and now expanded to include additional pads at Point Arguello. Cape Canaveral refers to the collection of pads both on the Cape and on nearby Merritt Island, most administered by the Kennedy Space Center. Kapustin Yar is the town nearest the nodal point of launches from a site the U.S.S.R. calls Volga Station. Wallops Island is a NASA site on the Delmarva Peninsula. Uchinoura is a site on Kagoshima Bay, Kyushu. Shuang Cheng Zi is the current spelling of what was Shuang Cheng Tzu in Gansu (formerly Kansu) province. The Indian Ocean Platform also carries the designator San Marco and was constructed by Italy just outside the territorial waters of Kenya. Kourou is in French Guiana. Tanegashima is an island at the northern end of the Ryukyu chain. Hammaguir was the former French site in southern Algeria, later stopped and moved to Kourou. Woomera is in south Australia. Sriharikota is near Madras.
4. The count of launches matches other tables of this study and corresponds to the numbers recorded by COSPAR, the Committee on Space, of ICSU, the International Council of Scientific Unions.
SOURCES.—These have been derived as explained above, and as carried in (updated) logs of studies published by either the Senate Committee on Aeronautical and Space Sciences, or the House Committee on Science and Technology, derived from United Nations registers, Goddard Satellite Situation Reports, and the logs of the Royal Aircraft Establishment.
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