Special Design Bureau of MPEI

In 1947, the Council of Ministers of the USSR adopted a resolution on the creation of the sector of special works at MPEI (PO 4120). Its founder was Vladimir Aleksandrovich Kotelnikov, Dean of the Radio Engineering Department of MPEI. He became his first leader. Since 1954, the sector created to participate in missile-related work was headed by Alexei Fedorovich Bogomolov .

In the period 1947-1953, the OKB MEI was developed, mastered in mass production and transferred to the arsenal of the Soviet Army, a system for controlling the trajectory and determining the point of impact of the R-2 and R-5 missiles.

After 1954, A. F. Bogomolov and V. A. Kotelnikov became members of the Council of Chief Designers , which made all the important decisions in the framework of the space program of the 1940s - 1950s ^[1] .

In the trajectory measurement system developed in 1953–1955 for the development of the R-7 rocket, the Fakel-M beacon transmitter was used — the world's first high-precision phase-angle direction finding system appeared. The created Tral radio telemetry system provided telemetric information on the state and functioning of all systems and assemblies, on the flight progress, orientation, and other parameters and characteristics. Using these systems, the launch of the first and second satellites was ensured.

In 1958, the special work sector was renamed the Special Design Bureau of MPEI. The construction of a new laboratory building and the building of the future Experimental Plant has begun. The number grew rapidly due to the best graduates of MPEI and other higher educational institutions. A large territory was allocated for the OKB MEI in the Moscow Region, where a test site was originally created, which turned into the Space Communications Center of the OKB MEI “Bear Lakes” . By 1959, the OKB MEI had about 500 full-time employees. In addition, from 100 to 200 teachers and employees of various departments of MPEI participated in the design bureau. The pilot plant also had about 500 workers and engineers.

On May 22, 1959, the Resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR No. 569-264 was issued on the development of an experimental version of a satellite for human flight; OKB MPEI was entrusted with the creation of radio telemetry systems, trajectory control and television.

In order to obtain television images transmitted from the first Vostok-1 ship, the simplest station was used, based on the Tral telemetry station, developed at OKB MPEI with the participation of the All-Russian Research Institute of Television. They continued to develop television systems for subsequent spacecraft. The efforts of the Design Bureau were awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor .

During the implementation of the lunar program , for the purposes of telecontrol and telecontrol of lunar vehicles ( Luna-4 - Luna- 12) in 1958-1959, the OKB MEI developed a receiving antenna TNA-200 with a mirror diameter of 25 meters, modernized for NIP- 10 under the name TNA-400 and successfully used in a large number of space operations until the end of the 20th century.

By the mid-1960s, the number of OKB MEI was already about 1,500 people with the same number of the Experimental Plant.

In the 1970s and 1980s, it participated in the mapping of Venus using radars with a synthesized aperture of the automatic interplanetary spacecraft Venera-15 , Venera-16 , and in providing trajectory measurements of several dozen spacecraft for various purposes, including Soyuz spacecraft , in the creation of the Tselina space complex for the collection of special information, the Earth remote sensing system at the Mir space station , in the creation of a network of relay antennas of the TNA-57 type in the Orbit-Lightning system ; two unique TNA-1500 radio telescopes ( RT-64 ) were put into operation, providing communications with spacecraft operating in deep space.

In the 1980s, OKB MEI provided control of all low-orbit spacecraft in India.

Currently, he continues to develop new antenna systems for space, aviation and ground-based, develops technologies for creating advanced telemetry systems, creates his own supercomputer.

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• History of the radar in OKB MPEI / Bugaev Yu. N. // History of domestic radar. - M .: Publishing House "Capital Encyclopedia", 2011.

• Kriss P. Zh. Contribution of OKB MEI to providing the world's first space flights on Vostok and Voskhod spacecraft
• To ensure defense .