I am looking for information on which enterprise was responsible for the design and construction of the Sokol - 1 PKO Circular Observing Periscope used on the Almaz manned orbital station.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
According to Asif Siddiqi's "The Almaz Space Station Complex: A History, 1964-1992", part 1, JBIS, Vol 54, No 11/12, November/Ddecember 2001 (page 400 - Table 6) the Sokol 1 periscope was manufactured by TsKB Foton of Kazan' Optical Mechanical Plant. I can find no other reference to this enterprise.
Does anyone on this forum have information on what current name TsKB Foton of Kazan' Optical Mechanical Plant is known by?
Names of these enterprizes are almost same.
Currently they are named GUP TsKB "Foton" (ГУП ЦКБ "Фотон") and public corporation Kazan' Optical Mechanical Plant (ОАО "Казанский оптико-механический завод")
I am very appreciative for this information :D !
The next item I have not been able to locate is the designer / manufacturer of the solar panels created for the manned version of the Almaz Orbital Station. The design for these panels seem to be unique to this station.
Can anyone in this forum give me information as to the origin of the solar collectors and if this (or a similar design) was ever used on any other satellite?
ЦитироватьI am very appreciative for this information :D !
The next item I have not been able to locate is the designer / manufacturer of the solar panels created for the manned version of the Almaz Orbital Station. The design for these panels seem to be unique to this station.
Can anyone in this forum give me information as to the origin of the solar collectors and if this (or a similar design) was ever used on any other satellite?
According to the official NPO Mashinostroyeniya history ("60 лет самоотверженного труда во имя мира") the solar arrays themselves were built in-house at TsKBM, the solar cells by VNII Istochnikov Toka (VNIIIT) and the batteries by NIAI.
VNIIIT was later renamed NPO Kvant and GNPP Kvant (by the way, there's a story on its chief designer N.S. Lidorenko in NK 6/2006). NIAI was actually VNIAI (Всесоюзный научно-исследовательский аккумуляторный институт) and was later renamed NIAI Istochnik. It's based in St-Petersburg.
There are several paragraphs on the Almaz solar cells in the book "50 лет впереди своего века", a Russian Space Agency book on the Russian space industry which has a section on GNPP Kvant. They were designed to benefit from the relatively large amount of solar energy radiated back by the Earth in the low orbits that the Almaz stations used. There are no indications these solar cells were used in other programmes as well.