Kosmos 955

Kosmos 955 (International Designator: 1977-091A, satcat number 10362[1]) was a Soviet ELINT satellite, launched from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome on September 20, 1977 at 01:01 UTC. The satellite's mass was 2,500 kg.[1] Kosmos 955 had a periapsis of 631 km, apoapsis of 664 km, period inclination of 81,2° and an orbital eccentricity of 0.002346999943256378. It was launched by a Vostok-2M carrier rocket.

TASS report on the launch of Kosmos-955.

It decayed from orbit 8 September 2000.[2]

Overview

The launch of Kosmos 955 has been suggested as the cause of the Petrozavodsk phenomenon.[3]

According to the official report (pictured), the satellite contained scientific equipment for the "further exploration of outer space" as well as tools for making exact measurements of its orbital parameters. Also, the satellite was capable of self-observation of its own systems and devices. However,[1] no public data or experiments have ever been returned and it is presumed that it was a test of the military surveillance system, Tselina-D.

gollark: The `i` would still be a copy of the one in the list.
gollark: No, it would do the same thing.
gollark: When you loop over the tuple, `i` is *also* a new thing which can't affect the variables in the tuple.
gollark: (not that you can mutate tuples anyway)
gollark: So when you have `(a, b, c, d)` that (conceptually) creates a new copy of `b`, changes to which won't affect the original variable `b`.

References
  1. "Cosmos 955". NASA. Retrieved 11 September 2012.
  2. https://www.celestrak.com/satcat/
  3. "Soviet UFO due to secret launch". Science News. 112. October 8, 1977.
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