WHAT IT IS
Noginsk-9 is a closed military settlement in Moscow Oblast, about 60 km east of Moscow and about one kilometre south-west of the village of Dubrovo. It is the garrison and computing headquarters of the Russian military space-surveillance network. The formation that sits there is the 821st Main Centre for Reconnaissance of Situation in Space (Главный центр разведки космической обстановки, GTsRKO), military unit 61437. That centre owns the Sistema Kontrolya Kosmicheskogo Prostranstva (SKKP) and keeps the Main Catalogue of man-made space objects. In Western terms it is the Russian counterpart of the U.S. Space Surveillance Network operations centre — not a radar face, not a telescope dome, but the place where the tracks arrive and the catalogue is written.
The town is also called Dubrovo in some civilian maps, Stromyn as a garrison nickname, and military town 224. Population in open figures is on the order of 6,000–10,000 including families. It is not Krasnoznamensk (the 153rd Titov Main Trial Centre that flies Russian military satellites) and it is not the 820th Main Centre for Missile Attack Warning. Those are neighbouring institutions in the same Space Forces / 15th Aerospace Defence Army family.
WHAT THE CENTRE DOES
Published task lists for the GTsRKO are consistent across Russian encyclopedic sources:
detect objects on geocentric orbits; classify them by type; determine time and area of possible re-entry in emergency cases; analyse and assess the space situation; support unimpeded deployment and operation of Russian spacecraft; inform higher staffs and designated consumers; counter foreign space-reconnaissance means as an information problem — i.e. know what is looking, from where.
More than 300 Space Forces specialists are described as standing round-the-clock duty across the centre’s objects. A 2014 civilian visit piece used “18,000 objects” as a public talking figure for what the site watches; Jane’s in 2007 put the whole SKKP catalogue near 5,000 with about 50,000 observations per day. Those numbers are not the same census and should not be averaged.
Radar stations of the early-warning network send six-dimensional state vectors (position plus velocity) after smoothing. Optical sites such as Okno send angles and photometry. The centre correlates those reports, updates the Main Catalogue, and issues products for launch safety, conjunction and decay warning, and intelligence on foreign military satellites. Doctrine and history also assign the catalogue a targeting-support role for anti-satellite systems. That is a data function, not a launch button on this page.
THE SETTLEMENT AND THE UNITS
Headquarters coordinates in standard lists: 56°04′38″N, 38°30′18″E. Open unit lists associated with the town include v/ch 61437 (the Main Centre), and in various years 72175, 28289, 41646, 17205, 41161, plus garrison designator 09703-p. Holm’s order-of-battle reconstruction for unit 61437 gives a 1989 internal structure that is still the best public skeleton:
145th Centre for Space Control (TsKKP) — the catalogue shop; 1069th Command Centre — historically the ground control for the IS-MU co-orbital ASAT (off alert 1993); listed coordinates 56°04′03″N, 38°29′34″E; 1119th Communications Centre; 935th Information-Analytical Point.
By 2010 the same reconstruction adds a 735th independent Measuring Centre and a 572nd independent Radio-Technical Unit at Chekhov-7, and keeps outstations at Zelenchukskaya (Krona), Rudnevo/Nakhodka, and the 1109th independent Optical-Electronic Unit at Nurek (Okno). Moment, an ELINT complex for radio-emitting satellites, sits near the headquarters by Stromyn and has been operational since about 2000. Sledopyt is a later four-site ELINT network with one node at Noginsk-9; construction has been slow.
Western research on the Nivelir / Burevestnik co-orbital programmes identifies a shared ground-control facility designated 1009/5 at Noginsk-9. TsNIIKhM is the design house named in that literature. A 2015 Ministry contract for site work under object 3006-M at Noginsk-9, tied to informational support for those OKR titles, later went to court over non-performance. Those are documentary traces, not a public tour of 1009/5.
COMPUTING
The TsKKP’s published machine line is Elbrus. From 1984 a multiprocessor complex on Elbrus-1 was used to detect low-orbit satellites and compute elements. From 1995 the complex ran on Elbrus-2. From 2003 a local network with an Elbrus-90 Micro server was commissioned. That sequence matches the wider Soviet/Russian high-performance computing story already treated in this database on Don-2N: the same family of machines, a different mission (catalogue versus battle-manage the A-135). Later upgrades are described only as “enhanced processing” in 2016-class notes.
HISTORY
Space-control research began at 45th TsNII MO in late 1961 (Buslenko / Penchukov group). On 6 March 1965 the PVO Main Staff directed formation, on that institute’s base, of the “Special TsKKP Cadre.” That date is the centre’s anniversary. In April 1965 the government approved construction of the technical buildings in the Noginsk district; the settlement took the name Noginsk-9. A 30 June 1965 Central Committee / Council of Ministers decree covered the first and second stages of the TsKKP. First specialists and families are dated to 1963 on some local pages; the 145th Centre function is dated from November 1966. Site “built” dates in English lists often print 1971.
The early catalogue’s public legend includes the January 1978 Cosmos-954 decay: Noginsk analysis placed the impact in remote northern Canada, later confirmed on the ground. The IS-MU co-orbital ASAT was commanded from the 1069th centre on this reservation until it left alert in 1993.
Organizational titles moved with the rest of missile-space defence. Holm dates activation of unit 61437 as 17 June 1988 (alert 1 November 1988), rename to 45th independent Space Control Division on 1 October 1994, and rename to 821st Space Control Main Centre in 2009. Subordination ran through PKO/PRO commanders, then the 3rd Independent Missile and Space Defence Army (from 1 October 1998), then Space Troops / Aerospace Defence Forces Space Command / Aerospace Forces. The centre now sits in the 15th Special-Purpose Aerospace Defence Army. Current open commander listing: Colonel Ilya Nikolayevich Opekhtin.
WHAT IT IS NOT
Not the 820th missile-warning centre, though SKKP and SPRN exchange data and both sit under the same army. Not Titov’s 153rd at Krasnoznamensk, which flies the constellation. Not Don-2N or a Voronezh radar. Not Okno or Krona — those are sensors that report here. Not Roscosmos’ ASPOS OKP civilian debris-warning system at TsNIIMash; the two catalogues exist in parallel. Not Kazbek and not Perimeter.
STATUS
Noginsk-9 remains the SKKP headquarters. Okno-M, Krona, selected early-warning radars, Moment, growing optical-laser sites on Russian territory, and whatever portion of Sledopyt is complete all terminate, as products, in this catalogue. The town is no longer formally a “closed town” in the 1990s legal sense (the closed-town status was lifted in 2012 in one administrative note) but it is still a gated military settlement whose work is the national military picture of Earth orbit.
IN ONE SENTENCE
Noginsk-9 is the Moscow-oblast garrison where the 821st GTsRKO keeps Russia’s SKKP catalogue on an Elbrus-descended computing plant — the receiving end of Okno, Krona, and the warning radars, and historically the ground post of the IS-MU ASAT — not a sensor, the room the sensors report to.