Yantar ( rus, Янтарь meaning amber) is a series of

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eigh ...

n (previously

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

)

reconnaissance satellite A reconnaissance satellite or intelligence satellite (commonly, although unofficially, referred to as a spy satellite) is an Earth observation satellite or communications satellite deployed for military or intelligence applications. The ...

s, which supplemented and eventually replaced the Zenit spacecraft. Kosmos 2175, a Yantar-4K2 or ''Kobalt'' spacecraft, was the first satellite to be launched by the

Russian Federation Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia North Asia or Northern Asia, also referred to as Siberia, is the northern region of Asia, which is defined in geographic ...

following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Yantar-Terilen was the first real-time digital system. Yantar satellites also formed the basis for the later Orlets,

Resurs Resurs-DK No.1, also called Resurs-DK1, was a commercial Earth observation satellite capable of transmitting high-resolution imagery (up to 0.9 m) to the ground stations as it passed overhead. The spacecraft was operated by NTs OMZ, the Russian ...

and

Persona A persona (plural personae or personas), depending on the context, is the public image of one's personality, the social role that one adopts, or simply a fictional character. The word derives from Latin, where it originally referred to a theatri ...

satellites. 179 have been launched, nine of which were lost in launch failures. All Yantar satellites were launched using the

Soyuz-U The Soyuz-U launch vehicle was an improved version of the original Soyuz rocket. Soyuz-U was part of the R-7 family of rockets based on the R-7 Semyorka missile. Members of this rocket family were designed by the TsSKB design bureau and cons ...

carrier rocket until Kosmos 2480 in 2012 which was announced as the last launch of that rocket from

Plesetsk Plesetsk (russian: Плесе́цк) is an urban locality (a work settlement) and the administrative center of Plesetsky District, Arkhangelsk Oblast, Russia, situated about northeast of Moscow and south of Arkhangelsk. Municipally, it is ...

. Subsequent launches used the modernized Soyuz-2.1a rocket. The last Yantar mission was Kosmos 2505, a Yantar-4K2M or ''Kobalt-M'', launched on 5 June 2015. Reconnaissance missions have been taken over by the

class of satellites.

History

In 1964, Soviet design bureau OKB-1 was tasked with improving on the newly operational

Zenit-2 The Zenit-2 is a Ukrainian, previously Soviet, expendable carrier rocket. First flown in 1985, it has been launched 37 times, with 6 failures. It is a member of the Zenit family of rockets and was designed by the Yuzhmash. History With 13� ...

reconnaissance satellites. They had three streams of work: modifying Zenit satellites, a manned reconnaissance craft called Soyuz-R and a new photoreconnaissance satellite based on Soyuz-R. The third stream was code-named Yantar and initially there were to be two types - Yantar-1 for medium resolution imaging and Yantar-2 for high resolution. In 1967, a new high resolution satellite was proposed called Yantar-2K. Yantar-2K received government support with the first flight originally planned for 1970, although this deadline slipped. The Yantar program produced two memorable launch accidents. The first of these was on May 15, 1996 when an attempted launch of a 1KFT (Kometa) at Baikonur's LC-31 failed 50 seconds after liftoff when the payload fairing disintegrated. The satellite was destroyed by aerodynamic forces, but the booster continued to fly until T+126 seconds when it began to drift off its flight path, leading to an automatic shutdown command. On June 20, a few weeks later, a 4K1 (Oktan) launched from Plesetsk's LC-16 and met nearly the same fate when again the payload fairing disintegrated 50 seconds after launch. This time the onboard destruct system on the satellite activated and destroyed it, after which ground controllers sent a manual shutdown command to the booster, which crashed 4 miles (6 kilometers) from the pad. The back-to-back failures were traced to a manufacturing defect in the payload shrouds, which were produced in a batch, and they left Russia's ability to perform military reconnaissance severely hampered. In both cases, the shrouds broke up at the point of maximum aerodynamic pressure during ascent.

Variants

Yantar-2K

Yantar-2K differed from Zenit in that it had to stay in orbit for a month unlike Zenit's 8–14 days. It also had two film return capsules, something it had in common with the US

KH-7 GAMBIT BYEMAN codenamed GAMBIT, the KH-7 (Air Force Program 206) was a reconnaissance satellite used by the United States from July 1963 to June 1967. Like the older CORONA system, it acquired imagery intelligence by taking photographs and returning ...

reconnaissance satellite. It had three parts: the aggregate/equipment module (AO - Agregatnyy Otsek), the instrument module (PO - Pribornnyy Otsek) and the special equipment module/special apparatus module (OSA - otsek spetsial'noy apparatury). The special equipment module was the part that returned to earth at the end of the mission, and contained the Zhemchug-4 (pearl) camera. Each section was shaped like a truncated cone which gave the craft a conical shape. The craft was 6.3m long (although one source says 8.5m) with a maximum diameter of 2.7m. It weighed 6.6 tonnes.

Yantar-4K1

Yantar-4K1 was a modification of the Yantar-2K. It had a better camera, the Zhemchug-18, and was in orbit for 45 days rather than the 30 days of Yantar-2K. Other systems were the same as the Yantar-2K and both types of satellites were launched in the same period. Both satellites were retired in 1984. } meaning phoenix) , 11F624 , 23 May 1974 , 28 June 1983 , 30 , , - , Yantar-4K1 , Oktan ( rus, Октан meaning octane) , 11F693 , 27 April 1979 , 30 November 1983 , 12 , , - , Yantar-1KFT , Kometa ( rus, Комета meaning

comet A comet is an icy, small Solar System body that, when passing close to the Sun, warms and begins to release gases, a process that is called outgassing. This produces a visible atmosphere or Coma (cometary), coma, and sometimes also a Comet ta ...

)
Siluet ( rus, Силуэт meaning

silhouette A silhouette ( , ) is the image of a person, animal, object or scene represented as a solid shape of a single colour, usually black, with its edges matching the outline of the subject. The interior of a silhouette is featureless, and the silhou ...

) , 11F660 , 18 February 1981 , 2 September 2005 , 21 , , - , Yantar-4K2 , Kobalt ( rus, Кобальт meaning

cobalt Cobalt is a chemical element with the symbol Co and atomic number 27. As with nickel, cobalt is found in the Earth's crust only in a chemically combined form, save for small deposits found in alloys of natural meteoric iron. The free element, ...

) , 11F695 , 21 August 1981 , 25 February 2002 , 82 , , - , Yantar-4KS1 , Terilen ( rus, Терилен meaning terylene) , 11F694 , 28 December 1982 , 21 December 1990 , 15 , , - , Yantar-4KS1M , Neman ( rus, Неман meaning

Neman The Neman, Nioman, Nemunas or MemelTo bankside nations of the present: Lithuanian: be, Нёман, , ; russian: Неман, ''Neman''; past: ger, Memel (where touching Prussia only, otherwise Nieman); lv, Nemuna; et, Neemen; pl, Niemen; ; ...

) , 17F117 , 10 July 1991 , 3 May 2000 , 9 , , - , Yantar-4K2M , Kobalt-M , 11F695M , 24 September 2004 , 5 June 2015 , 10 ,

References

{{Russian Reconnaissance Satellites Reconnaissance satellites of the Soviet Union Military equipment introduced in the 1970s