Almas (space station)

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Line drawing of an Almaz space station

Almas or Almaz ( Russian Алмаз for " diamond ") - also known as OPS ( ОПС , Орбитальная пилотируемая станция , orbital Well Pilotiruemaja stanzija for "Manned Orbital Station") - was a series of partially manned artificial satellite of the Soviet Union in low Earth orbit . Together with the DOS series ( Russian ДОС , Долговременная орбитальная станция , Dolgowremennaja orbitalnaja stanzija for "long-term orbital station ") it represented part of the Salyut space stations.

They served especially the reconnaissance and thus military purposes, which was always officially denied. The difference to the DOS stations was the very high resolution photo technology for the time, which was used for reconnaissance purposes. Photos could be developed on site.

The Almas program began in 1973. It was interrupted in 1978 and completely discontinued in 1980 without being started again.

Almas 1

Almas 1 was launched on April 3, 1973 under the code name Salyut 2 for reasons of military secrecy . Almost a month later, on April 29, 1973, all instruments had failed after a loss of pressure, whereupon it crashed on May 28, 1973.

Almas 2

Almas 2 or Salyut 3 was the third Salyut station that could reach its designated orbit. It was launched on June 25, 1974 and was to be visited by two Soyuz crews. However, it was only used by the Soyuz-14 crew as the Soyuz-15 mission had to be canceled. On January 24, 1975, it was brought to a controlled crash and burned up in the earth's atmosphere. Shortly beforehand , some test shots are said to have been fired from an NR-23 rapid-fire cannon that was on board.

Almas 3

Almas 3 or Salyut 5 was launched on June 22, 1976 and served two Soyuz crews ( Soyuz 21 and Soyuz 24 ) as a residence for a total of 67 days. The Soyuz-23 mission did not reach Almas 3 . On August 8, 1977, she was brought to a controlled crash.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. Origin of the Almaz project ( Memento from October 9, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) at russianspaceweb.com
  2. ^ Anatoly Zak: Here Is the Soviet Union's Secret Space Cannon. popularmechanics.com, November 16, 2015, accessed March 5, 2016 .