Wikimedia CommonsWith its high mountains, clear weather, minimal radio congestion and southern location, Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula was ideal for a Soviet space communication system. Which is why, in 1959, the Soviet space program began building. In Yevpatoria, 100 miles south of the current front line in southern Ukraine, they constructed a massive space radio installation: 10 giant, upward-pointing radio dishes plus their associated power and control facilities. As part of the sprawling Soviet space communications network, the Yevpatoria site was known as NIP-16. According to Russian space historian Anatoly Zak, NIP-16’s builders cobbled the hardware together from old railroad bridges, the hulls of decommissioned submarines and the rotating mechanism from a scrapped battleship.

Source: Forbes June 25, 2024 14:04 UTC