The first family of Soviet communications satellites was the Molniya (lightning) satellites, built by the NPO Design Bureau in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia. It became famous for its peculiar orbits, and the Americans initially didn’t understand their usefulness. It had a period of 12 hours, with an apogee of 36,000 km (like the GEO satellites, and usually over Siberia) but a perigee of only 600 km (usually over the Americas for good photographic resolution). The idea was actually Bill Hilton’s, who presented it to the British Interplanetary Society in 1960. It evidently had a wider audience than he thought… The first successful launch took place in April 1965, and a constellation of eight satellites was maintained. The last Molniya was launched in June 2003: it was the 144th.
