The founders of cosmonautics, justifying in the first half of the twentieth century the need for mankind to enter extraterrestrial space, among other practical purposes called the development of astronomy. They wrote: observation of celestial bodies is complicated by atmospheric fluctuations and unpredictable weather, so the removal of telescopes outside the planet will increase their "farsightedness" by orders of magnitude.
The idea of space observatories was put forward by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky in his article "Free Space" (1883), Hermann Obert in his work "Rocket into interplanetary space" (1923) and Max Valle in his book "Flight into world space" (1924). After that, astronomical observations from near-Earth orbit were often described in popular science literature and fiction: it is enough to remember the novel by Alexander Belyaev "Star of the KEC" (1936).
The first attempts to conduct observations at high altitudes were made long before the beginning of space flights. For example, it is known that during the complete solar eclipse on June 19, 1936, the Moscow astronomer Pyotr Kulikovsky climbed the substratostat to photograph the sun's crown. For American astronomy, a practical step to the orbital telescopes was the program "Stratoscope" (Stratoscope), the development of which was led by the famous astrophysicist Martin Schwarzschild.
The first telescope with a main mirror diameter of 30.5 cm, created as part of the program, was launched on August 22, 1957, and reached a height of 25.3 km. There, the instrument cluster began to automatically take pictures of our luminaire in high resolution, and then the film was shown on the ground. The result of the experiment impressed the scientists, and the program was developed: the study of the Sun and other objects by stratoscopes continued until 1971, after which they gave way to more advanced tools.
Observers in space
Practical astronautics was successfully developing, and engineers took the next step: they started designing orbital telescopes. American specialists developed a series of satellites called Orbital Astronomical Observatory (Orbital Astronomical Observatory), which could be positioned on any celestial body and with the highest accuracy hold it in the "field of view" of devices. Satellite JSC-1, launched into space on April 8, 1966, could not open the solar panels and start the program of observations.
But JSC-2 (Stargazer), launched on December 1968, has successfully worked for more than four years. The last spacecraft of this series, JSC-3, called Copernicus, was launched in August 1972 and operated for nine years.
The Skylab (Sky Laboratory) orbital station included a large multispectral ATM (Apollo Telescope Mount) observatory. With its help, astronauts again studied the Sun. Their observations led astronomers to rethink the attitude towards our luminaire: previously, it was thought that this was a more or less calm celestial body with a homogeneous heliosphere, but in fact, the structure of its gas envelope was complex and variable. In addition, ATM was used to track the Cogoteka comet - the results of these observations helped to confirm the theory of how comets were formed outside the solar system.
Soviet scientists gained the ability to conduct astronomical observations in space when the Salute stations began to operate. The Orion ultraviolet telescope, developed by the Byurakan Astrophysical Observatory, was installed on Salute 1. The astronauts used it to get spectrograms of Vega and Agena (Centauri beta) - thanks to this it was possible to refine the theoretical model of the photosphere of high-temperature stars.
The Orion-2 telescope went into space aboard Soyuz-13 in December 1973. The crew managed to capture about 10 thousand spectrograms of dull or distant stars - with the shine of more than a tenth of a star size. It took a decade to process the information received: the catalog compiled according to "Orion-2" data was published only in 1984.
The OST solar telescope was used on Salute 4, and its automatic guidance system was defective. Astronauts switched to manual control - almost like in old fantasy novels. Besides, Alexey Gubarev and Georgy Grechko for the first time in history have spent operation on the orbital repair of a telescope - on February 2, 1975, they have sprayed on its mirror aluminum that has considerably improved quality of the image. The next crew of "Salut-4" on June 18 was lucky to observe the outbreak of the Sun and the appearance of a giant protuberance. The "control" survey in the visible part of the spectrum was conducted by the staff of the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory.