Russia's military eyes in the sky

The Soviet Union's Sputnik began the space era

By BBC News Online's Ivan Noble

Russia's military satellite network still represents the major part of its space effort.

In Soviet times, military launches made up over 80% of all Soviet space launches.

Civilian and scientific projects took second place and often had to be piggy-backed on to military projects.

Russia's military satellites monitor compliance with arms control treaties and keep an eye on where Western powers are keeping their strategic missiles.

Eyes in the sky

They also carry out map making, steadily improving data used to aim intercontinental ballistic missiles. Photographic and radar systems are used to observe activity on Earth, while spy satellites monitor radio communications.

Military satellites are also used to keep missile tracking radar systems calibrated.

Russia's main military space forces control centre is at Golytsino, near Krasnoznamensk, around 45 kilometres (30 miles) west of Moscow.

The country's main launch facility on its own territory is at Plesetsk, but because it is so far north, launching rockets into orbits suitable for reaching the International Space Station involves wasteful and expensive use of fuel.

Alternative links

Such launches therefore usually take place from Baikonur in Kazakhstan, which is leased from the Kazakh authorities.

Soviet-era controllers could rely on a chain of ground stations and a fleet of ships to communicate with their satellites.

But when the union broke up, ground stations on independent territory in Ukraine and Georgia came out of the network. The tracking ships went to Ukraine, too, and rusted in port at Odessa.

A more limited range of ground stations is now in use, but it is clear that if one relay point on the ground were damaged by fire, alternative links might be available, depending on where each satellite was in its orbit.

Satellites come into range of different ground stations as they move around the Earth. Many Russian satellites are in elliptical orbits, spending little of their time close to Earth, but a few are in low-Earth orbit.