During the Cold War, when the area was part of East Germany, the eastern part of the Zingst peninsula on the German Baltic Sea coast in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania was a restricted military area, used for meteorological rocket experiments.
As the rockets reached heights up to 80 kilometres, the launch angle of the unguided rockets had to be determined with an accuracy of 2 degrees in order to prevent an impact outside the restricted area.
Additional launches continued for a short time after the fall of the Berlin Wall and German reunification (3 October 1990).
They were finally ended on 19 December 1990 for safety and technological reasons.
Nevertheless, between 14 February and 10 April 1992 a total of 19 Russian rockets of the MMR06-M type were launched at Zingst, of which 6 were successful.