In the latter part of the 1980s reports appeared of the Sharik from different Foton and Resurs-F missions were being re-used. At the 1989 IAF I met Gennadiy Anshakov who was then accredited to KB Foton and I asked him about this. He told me that normally it was expected that the Sharik would be flown three times normally, sometimes four times. (This was written up in an article for Space Markets, November-December 1989.)
Of course, in those times it was not prudent to poke too deeply into the photoreconnaissance programme!
I am wondering whether in the intervening years there have been any hints as to when the Sharik started to be re-used within the Zenit programme? Do we even know which was the first to fly two missions or more? Do we have any hard details about these being re-used with the Zenit programme?
And being very optimistic, do we know anything about the re-use of the Yantar main descent modules?
Thank you for any answers which can be given!
Didn't find mentions of the facts of a reuse of RV of Zenit satellites in the Russian-speaking Internet. But, when I worked in Samara, heard information that some "shariks" were reused. Unfortunately, I can't confirm officially this information.
Didn't find mentions of the facts of a reuse of RV of Zenit satellites in the Russian-speaking Internet. But, when I worked in Samara, heard information that some "shariks" were reused. Unfortunately, I can't confirm officially this information.
Thank you Dmitry!
I know that some TASS releases in the mid-1980s referred to a few satellites as using the same descent module as the "satellite launched on "XX MMM YYYY" and then this was confirmed when I met Anshakov at the IAF in 1989. I thought i would be hoping too much for any hard details to be available for the
Zenit satellites, but it would make sense if they had been re-used when possible.