Kosmos 545 ( meaning ''Cosmos 545''), known before launch as DS-P1-Yu No.62, was a

Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

satellite A satellite or an artificial satellite is an object, typically a spacecraft, placed into orbit around a celestial body. They have a variety of uses, including communication relay, weather forecasting, navigation ( GPS), broadcasting, scient ...

which was launched in 1973 as part of the Dnepropetrovsk Sputnik programme. It was a spacecraft, which was built by the Yuzhnoye Design Bureau, and was used as a radar calibration target for

anti-ballistic missile An anti-ballistic missile (ABM) is a surface-to-air missile designed to Missile defense, destroy in-flight ballistic missiles. They achieve this explosively (chemical or nuclear), or via hit-to-kill Kinetic projectile, kinetic vehicles, which ma ...

tests.

Launch

Kosmos 545 was successfully launched into

low Earth orbit A low Earth orbit (LEO) is an geocentric orbit, orbit around Earth with a orbital period, period of 128 minutes or less (making at least 11.25 orbits per day) and an orbital eccentricity, eccentricity less than 0.25. Most of the artificial object ...

at 11:44:50 UTC on 24 January 1973. The launch took place from Site 133/1 at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, and used a Kosmos-2I 63SM carrier rocket.

Orbit

Upon reaching orbit, the satellite was assigned its Kosmos designation, and received the International Designator 1973-004A. The North American Aerospace Defense Command assigned it the catalogue number 06348. Kosmos 545 was the sixtieth of seventy nine

DS-P1-Yu DS-P1-Yu was a series of Soviet satellites developed by the Yuzhnoye Design Office, for use in calibrating the Dnestr space surveillance and early-warning radar system. Between 1964 and 1976, a total of 79 satellites were launched on Kosmos ...

satellites to be launched, and the fifty-fourth of seventy two to successfully reach orbit. It was operated in an orbit with a perigee of , an apogee of , 70.9 degrees of inclination, and an orbital period of 91.9 minutes. It remained in orbit until it decayed and reentered the atmosphere on 31 July 1973.

References

1973 in spaceflight Kosmos satellites Spacecraft launched in 1973 Dnepropetrovsk Sputnik program {{USSR-spacecraft-stub

Launch

Orbit

See also

References