Documents / FOIA release
This Central Intelligence Agency file is a 1991 JPRS translation, report JPRS-USP-91-005. It carries the annotation and text of a Soviet brochure on the space program, written by one of the first cosmonauts. The brochure reviews what manned and unmanned spaceflight have achieved and calls the American lunar program a costly dead end pursued for prestige. It then proposes future tasks, including environmental monitoring satellites, orbiting factories, an international monitoring system, Mars sample return, radio telescopes and space robots.
“Low Earth orbit”15 pages
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# Concatenated JPRS Reports, 1991 Document 5 of 10 subscribers via relay satellites. 110. If power is high enough, so-called side-looking radars that are satellite-borne make it possible to perform round-the-clock, all-weather observation of the surface of the Earth and the air and even to monitor the movements of submarines. In theory, orbital radars could be use to differentiate between objects that are just a few meters long. 111. Such a system of satellites could be used to update information on what is happening at the Earth's surface every 30-60 minutes. 112. 6. Systems of radio telescopes placed in near-Earth and circumsolar orbits and operating as part of a single interferometry network. Radio telescopes taken to circumsolar orbit could be used to obtain a resolution in the ten-millionths of a second of arc and to peer to the very edge of our Universe. 113. Moreover, large radio telescopes on the order of a kilometer in size would enable man to begin a regular search for signals from extraterrestrial civilizations. 114. 7. Orbital astrophysical observatories working in various spectral ranges. 115. 8. If theoretical research confirms the wisdom of creating optical telescopes with mirrors spaced considerable distances apart, then it may turn out that they would best be placed on the Moon. The idea behind such telescopes is the same idea used in radiointerferometry-increasing the baseline of observation. But that baseline must be maintained and must be known with an accuracy down to tiny fractions of the wavelength of electromagnetic radiation at which the observation is being made, i.e., in this case, with an accuracy to fractions of a micron. That is where the idea came from to place them on the Moon. 116. 9. The need could arise to create a lunar base that could be used as astrophysical observatories on the surface of the Moon and as a base for studying the possibility of using lunar minerals in man's space-based activities. But the wisdom of opening operations in that area will, in my opinion, require additional consideration in the coming decades. 117. 10. Unmanned vehicles for bringing Martian soil and air samples back to Earth. 118. 11. If, as a result of those operations, it becomes necessary to perform a mission to Mars, then we will have to develop and build
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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 53 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.