VHS Tape of the Documentary 'Time Shift: Cold War Kids'

VHS Tape of the Documentary 'Time Shift: Cold War Kids'

VHS video tape of the BBC 4 documentary series Time Shift, episode ‘Cold War Kids’ - broadcast in 2003. Derek Slater and Bob Christie were interviewed alongside the Kettering Grammar School satellite tracking equipment for inclusion in the programme.

Derek Slater had worked with Geoffrey Perry tracking Soviet space activity with basic equipment at the Kettering Grammar School, using students (including Bob Christie) to assist them. His work alongside Perry and the students led to the formation of the Kettering Sat elite Tracking Group.

During the course of tracking Cosmos 112 and Cosmos 129, Perry and the Group 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 in 1966. Despite this fact, when the CIA vetted a U.S. Government report by Dr Charles S. Sheldon II in 1967 they asked him to remove references to Plesetsk due to its classification as ‘Secret’. In response to this, and so that he could include the information in his report, 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’s discovery becoming a global news story.