United States Senate Report 'Soviet Space Programs: 1976-80 Part 2'

United States Senate Report 'Soviet Space Programs: 1976-80 Part 2'

Report prepared for the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation for the United States Senate. It was produced in 1984 at the request of Bob Packwood by the Congressional Research Service.

The report was designed to update the U.S. Senate on Soviet space activities during the period 1976-80 (with supplementary data covering up to 1983), entitled ‘Manned Space Programs and Space Life Sciences’. It follows on from several earlier ones produced under the direction of Dr Charles S. Sheldon II. Sheldon died in 1981, whist this report was still being compiled and subsequently its delivery took longer than planned, with various contributors assisting with completing the work Dr Sheldon had started. Geoffrey Perry is thanked on page VII for his work peer-reviewing chapter 3, as are the Kettering Group for providing unclassified sources of material on the Soviet space programme. The Kettering Group, led by Perry, was originally made up of students at the Kettering Grammar School before evolving to include ex-students and international contributors.

Perry had worked with Derek Slater tracking Soviet space activity with basic equipment at the Kettering Grammar School, using students to assist them. During the course of tracking Cosmos 112 and Cosmos 129, Perry discovered that these two satellites must have been launched somewhere other than the previously used Baikonur Cosmodrome. He managed to pinpoint the location to the south of Archangel at Plesetsk and revealed this information through two letters he sent to the UK magazine Flight International.

Despite this fact, when the CIA vetted Sheldon’s earlier 1967 U.S. Government report they asked him to remove references to Plesetsk due to its classification as ‘Secret’. In response to this Sheldon tipped off the Washington Post about the existence of Perry’s letters to Flight International, which lead to Perry and the Kettering Grammar School becoming a global news story. This allowed Sheldon to publish the details of Plesetsk in his 1967 report.

Perry’s increased involvement as a consultant and contributor for U.S. Government reports highlights his growing status as an international expert.