The NIP-16 ground station in Yevpatoria, Crimea, was built to communicate with deep space missions using, among other assets, this decommissioned ADU-1000 transmitting array consisting of eight 16-meter antennas. Credit: Rumlin / Wikicommons
The NIP-16 ground station in Yevpatoria, Crimea, was built to communicate with deep space missions using, among other assets, this decommissioned ADU-1000 transmitting array consisting of eight 16-meter antennas. Credit: Rumlin / Wikicommons

Matthew Bodner — In April 2015, the commander of Russia’s Space Forces, Alexander Golovko, announced plans to overhaul a Soviet-built space tracking facility known as NIP-16 and re-integrate it into Russia’s network by 2020. Located in Yevpatoria, a town situated on the Crimean Peninsula, the facility — built in the 1960s for tracking space probes bound for Venus and Mars — was among the spoils of Russia’s swift yet bloodless seizure of the region from independent Ukraine in March 2014.

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Jeff Foust writes about space policy, commercial space, and related topics for SpaceNews. He earned a Ph.D. in planetary sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a bachelor’s degree with honors in geophysics and planetary science...

Matthew Bodner is a freelance journalist based in Moscow. He previously worked for The Moscow Times.