COMMUNICATION AND TRACKING FACILITIES

Lunar and interplanetary missions required facilities for tracking spacecraft on their journeys through deep space and to communicate with them for navigation, control and data acquisition. Korolev chose Ycvpatoria in 1957 as the site for these facilities because it offered a southerly latitude near the plane of planetary orbits. It was also conveniently close to the Black Sea and Crimean resorts.

Known as the Center for Long Range Space Communications (TsDUC), its first facility was a 22 meter antenna built in 1958 for lunar missions. The first phase of construction for planetary missions was ready in 1960. Korolev built his receiving stations by scavenging old naval parts – using the hull of a scrapped submarine, a revolving turret from an old battleship, and a railway bridge on top of the turret to hold the antenna array. Each array consisted of eight antennas in two rows of four all of which moved in unison. There were two sites, one to the north for the receivers and the other to the south for the transmitters. The receiving station had two such antenna arrays, each using eight 15.8 meter dishes. They operated in the meter band at 183.6 MHz, in the decimeter band at 922.763 and 928.429 MHz (32 cm), and in the centimeter band at 3.7 GHz (8 cm) and 5.8 GHz (5 cm). The transmitter station had one array of eight 8 meter dishes. This ‘Plutori transmitter was rated at 120 kW and operated at 768.6 MHz (39 cm). A ground-link microwave station was set up for transmitting data to a second station at Simferopol and then on to other locations in the USSR. The TsDUC facilities went online September 27, 1960, only a day before

the optimal launch date for Mars, although the first Mars launch did not occur until October 10. Between 1963 and 1968 Yevpaioria and Simferopol each received a 32 meter “Saturn’ dish, and five others were installed at Baikonur in Kazakhstan, Sary Shagan in Balkash, Shclkovo near Moscow, and Ycniscicsk in Siberia. In 1979 a 70 meter ‘Kvanf dish was built at Yevpatoria. TsDUC now also has a 64 meter antenna at Bear Lake near Moscow, and a 70 meter dish in Ussurusk near Vladivostok. All deep space missions were operated from Yevpatoria until a new control facility was opened in Moscow in 1974.

The USSR did not have a worldwide network of tracking stations like NASA’s Deep Space Network, with serious consequences for deep space mission operations. Critical operations such as planetary encounters had to be planned for times when the spacecraft could communicate. And since signals could not be picked up when a spacecraft was below the horizon, spacecraft were designed to transmit only when Yevpatoria had a line of sight. This system required carefully controlled timing of spacecraft operations and reorientation of the spacecraft for high-gain operations. To provide a measure of relief from the limitations on spacecraft operations imposed by a single ground station, the Soviets deployed tracking ships in the world’s oceans. These ships also tracked missile tests, covered manned space missions, and tracked interplanetary missions making the second firing of their upper stage to escape Earth orbit into interplanetary space. The ships were not a wholly satisfactory solution for deep space tracking, as only small dishes could be mounted on the ships and weather conditions could severely hamper operations. The first ships deployed in 1960 were the Illchevsk, Krasnodar and Dolinsk. In 1965/6 the Illchevsk and Krasnodar were replaced by the Ristna and Bezhitsa. A third generation consisting of the Borovichi* Kegostrov, Morzhovets and Neve! were deployed in 1967. These were all converted merchant ships of about 6Л00 tons displacement with crews of 36. In May 1967 the first purpose-built traeking ship was introduced, the Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov (17.000 tons). The Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin (45,000 tons) and Academician Sergey Korolev (21,250 tons) joined the fleet in 1970. In addition, a number of smaller traeking vessels were deployed: the Cosmonaut Pavel Belyayev, Cosmonaut G corgi Dobrovolskiy Cosmonaut Viktor Patsayev and Cosmonaut Vladislav Voikow