Tsikada was (maybe still is?) the Russian version of TRANSIT - it used 150MHz and 400MHz carriers, but I'm pretty sure the orbits were (like TRANSIT) low polar rather than Geosynchronous. You may also run into the name "Parus" - which was the name of the system before it was released to civilian use. The same satellites also carried the receivers for the original COSPAS system (aka SARSAT in english) - they also apparently had some sort of datalink capability, although the exact details are not clear - my guess is that now GLONASS is fully operational this datalink is the main reason for retaining them in operational status.
It's also interesting that even after both the Tsikada and COSPAS programs were public knowledge the satellites were still given a cosmos-xxx designation which was normally only used for soviet military satellites (and launch failures). This strongly suggests that there was more stuff on board that they weren't talking about. _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
