Aitam

Work on the creation of space manned stations began in the U.S. and the U.S.S.S.R. almost simultaneously - in the early 1960s. But since the Americans later focused on the prestigious Apollo program, the extensive program of space exploration in addition to Apollo left them with only the Skylab orbital station, launched on May 14, 1973 and the Space Shuttle, which is now the only operational manned spacecraft of the United States. The space station (SC) orbital block was built on the basis of the S-4B rocket, the third stage of the Saturn 5 launch vehicle, which once took a man to the Moon...

In accordance with the Apollo program, nine expeditions were sent to the Moon between 1969 and 1972. Six of them ended with twelve astronauts landing on the Moon's surface from the Bourgeois Ocean in the west to the Taurus Ridge in the east. The tasks of the first two expeditions were limited to flights in selenocentric orbits, and the landing of astronauts on the Moon on one of the expeditions was cancelled due to the explosion of the oxygen tank for fuel cells and the life support system, which took place two days after the launch...

Within a short period of time since the beginning of the space age, man not only sent automatic space stations to other planets and set foot on the surface of the Moon, but also revolutionized space science, which has not been equal in human history. Along with the great technological advances brought about by the development of cosmonautics, new knowledge about planet Earth and the surrounding worlds has been acquired. One of the first important discoveries made by a method other than the traditional...

It was only a few years after the space age that man first assessed the role of satellites in monitoring agricultural land, forests and other natural resources on Earth. The beginning was in 1960, when the meteorological satellites Tiros were used to obtain a map of the shape of the globe lying under the clouds. These first black-and-white TV images gave very little insight into human activity, and yet this was the first step. New techniques were soon developed to improve the quality of observations...

After the launches of the Soviet and American satellites the issue of practical use of the developed equipment came up. The capabilities of the equipment and the satellites themselves attracted the attention of meteorologists in terms of obtaining regular information about the constantly changing weather on a global scale. The first attempt in this direction was made by the Americans, who created a family of meteorological satellites "Tiros". Nine such satellites were put into orbit in 1960-1965...