Military space and strategic missile launchers are as closely related as the sky and the stars. Currently, the Aerospace Forces are once again part of the Strategic Missile Forces, in accordance with military reform plans. The new integration was immediately marked by a very significant event: the birth of a new cosmodrome in the Russian Far East. It was then that the Russian Aerospace Forces performed a "Russian miracle" by launching a spacecraft into orbit for the first time in the world using a light-class solid-fuel rocket. The accuracy was five times higher than expected! In accordance with Russia's Federal Space Program, the Government of the Russian Federation has ordered the implementation of the XXI Century project to create the Strela rocket and space system in the village of Svobodnoye in the Amur Region. The Svobodny Cosmodrome remains the only place in Russia where new-generation rockets can be launched. March 4, 1997, has already taken its place in the chronicle of space exploration. On that frosty morning, the silence of the Amur taiga was shattered by the thunder of a rocket. On 12 April 1997, the Zeya satellite was launched into a sun-synchronous orbit above the illuminated hemisphere of the Earth by the Russian Aerospace Forces from the launch pad of the mobile Topol complex using the Start-1.2 light-class missile, a conversion version of the RS-12M intercontinental ballistic missile (known in the West as the SS-25). This marked the birth of the first Far Eastern (and second in Russia) cosmodrome, Svobodny. Without exaggeration, what happened two years ago can be called a feat. In the place of the missile division of the Strategic Missile Forces, which was disbanded in accordance with the SALT II Treaty, equipment was installed and a sniper launch was carried out in the face of underfunding, the collapse of the economy and its military-space industry, the severance of economic ties, the outflow of scientific personnel, and the decline in the presti ... Читать далее