[8] It was previously known as TsKKP (Цккп) from Russian: Центр контроля космического пространства, romanized: Tsentr kontrolya kosmicheskogo prostranstva meaning 'centre for space monitoring'.

This programme asked the radar stations only to send information on requested objects and launches rather than everything they identified.

One concern raised with "Kosmos" was that it took the radar stations two to three minutes to do this, which disrupted their tracking of ballistic missiles.

It was important that the system concentrated on the military satellites of hostile countries and filtered these out from the noise of the wider space environment.

[12] The space monitoring centre was awarded the Soviet Minister of Defence Pennant for Courage and Military Valour.

The radar stations send the centre a six-dimensional vector consisting of co-ordinates and velocities taken from the smoothing of discrete measurements.

[5] This data consists of range, azimuth and elevation angle, and in addition some radars send radial velocity.