Polyus was a Soviet military satellite built and sent into space as a response to the US Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars) program heralded by former President Ronald Reagan in 1983. It is also the first spacecraft equipped with a weapon of any kind since Salyut 3. Launched during the maiden flight of Energia in 15 May 1987, it didn't however reached orbit due to an attitude control problem that unintentionally deorbited itself to the depths of the Pacific Ocean.
However, the Energia rocket performed flawlessly, and the data acquired during flight proved essential for the eventual launch of Buran some 18 months later
CONTROLS
- [SHIFT]+K = Deploy Solar Array
- CCCPCOMBI by dinghao
- ENERGY project, release 5 by kulch
- Baikonur LC 250 (UKSS), release 2 by kulch
- Mir Space Station v.1.3 by thorton for the RCS exhaust texture
- Project VesselBuilder for Orbiter by fred18
- This is the 2016 version of the Polyus section of the CCCPCOMBI addon, and like the Pioneer 10 and 11 (2016) addon, all content belong to their original creators. I modified the POLYLAUNCH.msh so that it completes the appearance of the POLYUS.msh by adding the two black "pods" on the bottom of the spacecraft via VesselBuilder
- Thanks especially to Kulch for updating his Energia addon for Orbiter 2016. It made me focus on how to deploy the fairings as (fairly) accurate as possible!
- Due to the very few documentations of the real thing, the performance of Polyus in simulation may or may not match the historical specifications, especially its RCS propulsion, although the three fairings automatically jettison at 90 km
- Supported Orbiter Version
- 2016
