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.
“Mission Control”7 pages
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
# Concatenated JPRS Reports, 1991 ## Document 5 of 10 technology, or economics for a man working in orbit (the practical work that has been done so far-making observations and turning cameras, instruments for observing outer space, and experimental equipment on and off- could have been done, theoretically, with automatic devices that, for the moment, can compete with man in everything but the repair and replacement of individual instruments and pieces of equipment; but the slot of "'repairman'" is hardly a secure, long-lasting niche). 12. In terms of applied, in-orbit activity that is beneficial to the people on Earth, the use of unmanned spacecraft has produced much better results. In that regard, we can name the following important achievements: 13. a marked expansion of the capabilities of telephone, telex, and computer communications through the use of communications satellites 14. intercontinental television communications 15. global weather monitoring with weather satellites, and dramatically better accuracy in weather forecasting and in warning of approaching natural disasters 16. improved maritime and airways navigation through the use of satellite-based navigation systems 17. greater reliability in the receipt of distress signals and in the identification of the area from which a signal is coming as a result of the use of satellite systems like Cospas-Sarsat 18. the capability of global and local ecological monitoring of land areas and sea surfaces and of the study of the Earth's natural resources with satellites 19. observation of land areas and sea surfaces with reconnaissance satellites not only for purposes of military reconnaissance, but also for monitoring adherence to international arms-limitation agreements. 20. Unmanned spacecraft have been used to obtain important new information in the field of scientific research. Such information includes the following: 21. discovery of the Earth's radiation belts 22. research findings associated with the Earth's ionosphere and magnetosphere 23. discovery of ''solar wind''
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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.