Please make a donation to support Gunter's Space Page.
Thank you very much for visiting Gunter's Space Page. I hope that this site is useful and informative for you.
If you appreciate the information provided on this site, please consider supporting my work by making a simple and secure donation via PayPal. Please help to run the website and keep everything free of charge. Thank you very much.

Spektr (TKM-O, 77KSO, 11F77O)

Spektr

Spektr, a Russian module to dock with the Mir space station complex, was launched from the Baykonur Cosmodrome by a Proton-K rocket.

Spektr was originally built as a military surveillance module under project Oktant, but with the end of the cold war, this project was shelved. The nearly comleted Spektr module was converted then to a scientific research module.

The 23.5 ton spacecraft was to remain with Mir for at least 3 years, but, like all modules remained at the station until the deorbiting of the complex.

It carries a Belgian grating spectrometer MIRAS that will monitor atmospheric gases such as ozone, carbon dioxide, freon and sulfur. It also carried some American equipment to implement the Mir-Shuttle rendezvous beginning in late 1995.

Spektr was heavily damaged, when the departing Progress-M 34 transporter collided with the module 25.06.1997. After that event, Spektr was no longer hermetically sealed and was no longer usable. Later, the electricity generated by the module, could agian be used for the Mir complex, when a special hatch was installed which featured power-cable interfaces.

The Instruments aboard the module were:

  • 286K binocular radiometer
  • Astra 2 - monitored atmospheric trace constituents, Mir environment
  • Balkan 1 lidar - measures upper cloud altitude. Used a 5320 angstrom laser source, provided 4.5 m resolution
  • EFO 2 photometer
  • KOMZA - interstellar gas detector
  • MIRAS absorption spectrometer - measured neutral atmospheric composition
  • Phaza spectrometer - surface studies. Examined wavelengths between 0.340-285 micrometer, and provides 200 km resolution
  • Taurus/Grif - monitored Mir's induced X/gamma ray background
  • VRIZ UV spectroradiometer
Nation: USSR
Type / Application: Space station
Operator: MOM → RKA
Contractors: Khrunichev
Equipment: see above
Configuration: 77K (TKS) based module
Propulsion:
Power: 4 deployable solar arrays, batteries
Lifetime: 3 years (design)
Mass: 19640 kg
Orbit: 221 km × 335 km, 51.6° (typical)
Satellite COSPAR Date LS Launch Vehicle Remarks
Spektr (TKM-O, 77KSO) 1995-024A 20.05.1995 Ba LC-81/23 Proton-K

Cite this page: