MIRNEWS.221    25 JULY 1994

Russian spaceflight trackingships.

Until 1992 the fleet of trackingships consisted of ten ships.
These ships formed a part of the infrastructure of controlcen
tres and measurement points for sovjet spaceflight operations.
In this case the word 'operations' covers a wide variety for
the assistance of the manned spaceflight program was only a
small part of their duties. The role of the ships, as far as
manned spaceflight was concerned, sharply deteriorated after
the beginning of the use of geostationary satellites for
communications between the Salyut-7 and the MIR-spacestations.
The TDRS system used by the Russians did not always work
satisfactorely and so all experts involved in Russian spacef
light expected that the 'ships' would remain operational at
least until 2000. Already in 1990 there circulated rumours
about the a gradual withdrawal of that fleet, but nobody dared
to take the responsibility. However the economical problems in
the last year of the S.U. forced the Russians to withdraw most
of the ships from service and as of january 1st 1992 the ships
in the Atlantic apart from some modest exceptions ceased to
assist during MIR-operations. Sometimes a ship was operational
in the Atlantic to assist space-operations for other objects
and organisations and now and then had to be stand-by during
MIR-operations (launches of Progresses, Soyuzes, dockings,
returnoperations, EVA's a.s.o.), but always on a secundary
basis. For the last half year the Kosmonavt Pavel Belyayev
operated from a position west of Africa and even played an
important role during the almost fatal flight of Soyuz-TM17 on
14.01.94. After some bumps of the S-TM17 into the MIR-station
the communications via the Altair (Cosmos-2054) ceased and
this caused great concern at TsUP. KPB was the first to pick
up radiotraffic from the S-TM17 and thus shortened the awful
uncertainty phase at TsUP by 10 minutes. In the past the ships
relayed traffic between MIR and TsUP via Molniya satellites
during the first part of MIR's footprint for our position.
Nowadays the traffic between MIR and TsUP only begins at TCA
for our position.
The fate of the fleet: the sheeps belonged to the Sovjet (now
Russian) Academy of Sciences. The maritime part fell under the
responsibility of the Baltic- and Blacksea shipping. The ships
which have homeports in the Ukraine (the Kosmonavt Yuriy
Gagarin and the Akademik Sergey Korolyov) now belong to that
country and so their role in spaceflight fully ceased. The
ships made some trips for tourists, but that was not succes
sful. Both ships have been used to evacuate Russian military
personel and their families from Cuba to St. Petersburg. From
there they returned to their Ukrainian ports. The Ukraine does
not know what to do with the ships and tried to sell them to
the Russians. The Russians were not interested: they still
have 4 ships for the Western Hemisphere and a 5th one is under
construction. Spaceflight needs over the Pacific are covered
by 2 ships of the Russian Navy, the Marshal Nedelin and the
Marshal Krylov. The Odessa based Kosmonavt Vladimir Komarov
already before the indepence of the Ukraine was transferred
to Leningrad to be refurbished for other purposes: ecological
expeditions in the Baltic and the North Atlantic. Thusfar this
plan did not work: the attempts to use the ship for that
purposes on a commercial base did not have success due to the
lack of customers. So in St Petersburg we have 4 ships: the
Kosmonavt Pavel Belyayev, the Kosmonavt Vladislav Volkov, the
Kosmonavt Viktor Patsayev and the Kosmonavt Georgiy Dobrovols
kiy. They are waiting for an assignment. Possibly one of them
will be used in the Atlantic west of Africa in october and
november 1994 to assist during the launch and docking of
Soyuz-TM20 (resp. 3 and 5.10.94) and the return flight of the
Soyuz-TM19 on 3.11.94. A new ship, the Akademik Nikolay Pilyu
gin, has already been launched and has to be fitted. Thusfar
it is not known whether this new ship will influence the fate
of 1 or more ships of the 4 in St Peterburg. After the last
expedition the Belyayev several times had contact with the
crew of the MIR-complex. From this traffic I could derive the
indication that the ship planned to visit Antwerp in Belgium.
This enabled me to go on board and I had a long and intere
sting conversation with the chief of the expedition, Nikolay
Burov and the captain Sivtsov. In spite of the enormous econo
mical difficulties of their country their hospitability to
wards me was 100%.

(This MIR-report is derived from the reports in Dutch 221 and
222. So the next MIR-report in English will be MIRNEWS.223)

Chris v.d. Berg, NL-9165/A-UK3202.