I’ve always had a soft spot for the Plesetsk launch site - twinned with #Kettering
One of my favourite space stories, and here’s a thread why https://twitter.com/roscosmos/status/1320597894899159040

Back in the beginning of the Space Age, Sputnik shocked the world. However, in Kettering a school teacher named Geoff Perry was disappointed that he didn’t have the ham radio equipment to track it.

But up stepped colleague Derek Slater, ham radio enthusiast and chemistry teacher. Between them they cobbled together all the equipment they needed to track Soviet satellites. Many years later Derek kindly donated some of this equipment to @spacecentre https://collections.spacecentre.co.uk/collections/Kettering%20Satellite%20Tracking%20Group

Derek and Geoff felt that they could inspire their students’ scientific minds, by showing them how to track satellites. This was the birth of the Kettering Satellite Tracking Group. They’d later feature on the cover of a The Wonder Stuff album

The kids came in b4 school, at lunch,+after - excited that the Soviets were sending objects into orbit during this highly secretive time. Later on they’d even pick up voice transmissions to Moscow, using equipment like this from a burnt out mini-cab! https://collections.spacecentre.co.uk/object-2014-11 

Then something odd happened. Derek looked over the data for 2 satellites, Cosmos 112 and 129. He worked out they couldn’t have launched from Baikonur. He plotted back that they’d launched from just south of Archangel. At a place called Plesetsk

This amateur group had discovered a secret Soviet launch site. They wrote and had published 2 letters in Flight International in 1966 revealing their bombshell. And... nothing happened.

However, over in USA Dr Charles Sheldon II was responsible for producing reports for Congress on what those pesky Soviets were up to in space. The CIA were allowed to look at his reports first though and redacted lots of sensitive info. Including mention of Plesetsk!

Sheldon was confused, saying that a group of school kids had already told the world about Plesetsk! NASA + CIA knew about it too, but Kettering Grammar School were the first to go public! Sheldon even credited them in the official report https://collections.spacecentre.co.uk/object-2014-18 

The world’s media descended on Kettering, twisting the story slightly to suggest that the school kids had more knowledge than NASA! Not strictly true, but these great newspaper comic strips show how the Kettering Group shot to fame https://collections.spacecentre.co.uk/object-34-2014 

In fact, the Kettering Satellite Tracking Group went from strength to strength. There were remote members in Europe, and even as far a field as Fiji
Geoff went on to write whole chapters for Dr Sheldon’s US gov reports, such was his expertise in Soviet space activity

There was even a TV docudrama made - ‘Sputniks, Bleeps and Mr Perry’
which you can watch here, and I recommend you do

Sadly, the group eventually stopped. But they celebrated their 50th anniversary at the Space Centre, as we put some of the equipment Derek so kindly donated to us on display in 2016. Even more sadly, Derek was no longer around to see it

It was so lovely to meet the group, and the family of Derek and Geoff to whom it meant a lot. You can find out much more from one of those kids that did the tracking, Bob Christie http://www.zarya.info/Kettering/Kettering.php

Lastly,I mentioned they picked up voice transmissions. We play one @spacecentre. It‘s of a cosmonaut talking to his wife who was visiting mission control. She’s berating him for not fixing their fence b4 going away! Makes me feel better about all I’ve not got done during lockdown