SOVIET BATTLE STATION SNAPSHOTS

Thank you, Slashdot. Thank you. How else would I have found out about these pho­tographs of the Soviet Union’s orbit­ing bat­tle sta­tion?
The Skif and its Polyus pro­to­type were sup­posed to be the Soviets’ answer to Star Wars — a space­craft to defend against (and launch its own) anti-​​satellite weapons. The Polyus was launched in ’87. But it couldn’t get itself into a work­ing orbit, prob­a­bly because of “a faulty iner­tial guid­ance sen­sor,” accord­ing to the Encyclopedia Astronautica. “No mem­ber of the Reagan or Bush admin­is­tra­tions ever admit­ted or revealed pub­licly any knowl­edge of Polyus. The US Navy has made no state­ments about any attempts to inves­ti­gate the wreck­age of Polyus, which lies on the floor of the South Pacific.”

November 22nd, 2004 | Space | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.