Russian Mystery Shots

At least seven times in the past eleven months, mysterious Russian unmanned space shots launched from the Soviet cosmodrome at Tyuratam, Kazakhstan, have set off flurries of speculation among U.S. space and military experts. All seven seem to have been attempts to return payloads to earth in one orbit or less, and all have had un usually inclined elliptical orbits with abnormally low perigees.

What is the purpose of the shots?

The Russians are not talking. The first in the series, fired without announcement from Tyuratam on Sept. 17, 1966, was observed by U.S. space trackers to explode into more than 80 pieces before it could complete its first orbit.

When a second unannounced launching on Nov. 2 virtually duplicated the performance of the first, the U.S. officially logged the shot and published its orbital data. Their hand tipped, the Russians have since announced that five similar shots, which were sent aloft between Jan." 25 and Aug. 8 of this year and apparently made successful re-entries, are part of their Cosmos scientific program. But they would say no more. The rest is a mixture of speculation and scientific guesswork.

Some space observers believe that the tests relate to an offensive orbiting weapons system. Other scientists have noted that the payloads seem to be brought back to earth within a closely limited area some 600 miles northeast of Tyuratam, where radar and other sensor devices can obtain a wide variety of re-entry data. Pursuing this line of reasoning, their best guess is that the Russian test flights are part of an effort to develop either maneuverable warheads that can avoid anti-ballistic missiles or manned vehicles that can withstand the 23,400 m.p.h. re-entry speeds of a lunar mission.

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