At the dawn of Space Age, the Soviet Union has already had in
place a network of ground control stations, allowing to
communicate with the early spacecraft to send commands onboard
and process the information received from orbit. As it was the
case, with early space launchers, the Soviet command and control
network owes its origin to the program of long-range ballistic
missiles. The early ballistic missiles required radio commands
to be sent onboard constantly to adjust their trajectories in
flight. The origin of rocket and satellite tracking network The
development of the first intercontinental ballistic missile, the
R-7, equipped with radio control, posed immediate challenge
before its creators - the extensive network of "measurement
stations" had to be deployed under the rocket path in order to
determine the vehicle's speed and direction and send flight
correction commands onboard. In addition, a number of
observation stations was required around the target range in
Kamchatka Peninsula, where the missile's