Orlets-1 (Don, 17F12) Sixth Generation Digital Recons
Western experts attribute this satellite to the sixth generation, believed to carry both film return capsules and digital transmission capabilities, while under the domestic classification it belongs to the second generation of optical intelligence satellites.
In May 1977 the Central Specialized Design Bureau in Samara decided to develop several new photo-intelligence satellites. The models suggested for development included the Orlets system for large swath high resolution and panoramic photography with faster data delivery. Under the plan the system was supposed to be developed in two stages. At the first stage the main parameters were to be achieved that did not require a significant change in the satellite weight (mainly the lifetime). At the second, after the development the Zenit-2 launch vehicle with a greater payload than Soyuz-U a modification satellite was supposed to be developed fully meeting the requirements of customers. To speed up data delivery an automatic machine was added to package exposed films into small return capsules - so-called capsule machine.
In 1981-1985 work was under way to develop Orlets of the first stage (sometimes known as Orlets-1). The satellite had a capsule machine with eight capsules. It was designed for being orbited by Soyuz-U or Soyuz-U1 launch vehicles.
This new generation of photo recons began operations with Kosmos 2031 on 18 July 1989. The spacecraft drew immediate attention with its 50.5 degree inclination, a rarely used orbit often employed for testing new satellites. (The previous use was the inaugural flight of the fifth-generation photo recon nearly seven years earlier.) On August 25, 1992, the system was approved for operation under the name of Don. So far six satellites of this type have been launched. Initially their service life was 58-60 days. The last two operated for 102 and 120 days respectively. The sixth-generation spacecraft had only flown once each year during 1989-1993.
Sixth-generation photo recons have only been launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome using the Soyuz-U2 launch vehicle, which has otherwise been restricted to supporting Soyuz TM and Progress-M missions. Following the first mission, each spacecraft was inserted into an orbital inclination of 64.8-64.9 degrees with mean operational altitudes normally between 240 and 260 km. Another peculiar, identifying characteris the in-orbit detonation of sixth-generation spacecraft at the end of their operational lives. Kosmos 2262, the last sixth-generation mission the only one to be launched during 1993-1994, nearly doubled the 60-day record of its processors with a flight lasting 102 days. The spacecraft was destroyed in orbit as it passed over northeastern Russia, ensuring that much of the debris would fall into the Pacific Ocean.
Namesake
Don (ancient, Tanals), a river of Russia [not to be confused with the Don, a river of Scotland, county of Aberdeen, rising near the Banffshire border], which issues from Lake Ivan-Ozero, in the government of Tula; and flows S. E. through the governments of Riazan, Tambov. Voronej, and Don Cossacks, to within 37 miles of the Volga, where it turns abruptly S. W. for 236 miles, and falls into the Sea of Azov; whole course nearly 900 miles. The chief tributaries are: Right bank, the Donetz and Voronej; left, the Khoper and Manitsch. Although not admitting vessels of much draft, the Don carried a large traffic especially during the spring floods, and a canal connects it with the Volga system of navigation. It had also very extensive and productive fisheries.
The Don River, of which less than a quarter lies within the Ukraine, was formerly an eastern border stream until the borders were extended into the Kuban region and to the Caspian Sea. Rostov-na-Donu, a city of Russia, situated in the delta of the Don river, near the Sea of Azov. Before the Great War it was an important trade center, from which was shipped vast quantities of grain and flour. The manufactures alone amounted to ten million dollars a year. Here are located the largest flour mills in the world. The city is also the center of the Donetz Basin coal mines, for which the Bolsheviki and the counter-revolutionary forces under Denikin struggled fiercely during 1919. The Bolsheviki held the city since the beginning of 1920. The population of about 176,000 consisted largely of Cossacks.
The four-part novel "And Quiet Flows the Don" by Mikhail Sholokhov was published between 1928 and 1940; the English translation of the first part appeared in 1934. The Don Flows Home to the Sea, part two of the original novel, was published in English translation in 1940. Set in the Don River basin of southwestern Russia at the end of the czarist period, the novel traces the progress of the Cossack Gregor Melekhov from youthful lover to Red Army soldier and finally to Cossack nationalist. War - in the form of both international conflict and civil revolution - provides the epic backdrop for the narrative and determines its tone of moral ambiguity. Hailed as the best war novel to emerge from the Soviet, Sholokhov's epic has indeed solidified its position in world literature as a must read for those interested in the art of war.
Michael Scammell noted "Sholokhov, the author of a sweeping epic of 1,300 pages with convincing scenes of war and peace, stirring battle passages, historical sweep and mature descriptions of love and family life, was 22 years old when he submitted the first volume for publication and 25 when he had completed three-quarters of it. That meant he was only 17 when the period he evoked so magnificently came to an end. And he must have written the bulk of the novel at phenomenal speed, in less than four years. Even Sholokhov's first editors wondered how this uneducated youth (he left school at 13) acquired such a profound knowledge of Cossack life, such a mature understanding of history and such a superb literary talent. Rumors of plagiarism surfaced almost immediately. Sholokhov was alleged to have stolen a manuscript from the map case of a dead White Army officer ... Then, in 1991, the journalist Lev Kolodny astonished the Russian literary world by announcing that he had found the manuscripts of Volumes 1 and 2 -- those most in dispute -- in a house in Moscow. In 1995 he published a thrilling account of his search for them, and a description of the manuscripts. They were indisputably in Sholokhov's hand, with authorial deletions and emendations, and their dates coincided exactly with the known facts of Sholokhov's early life."
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