The development of the large
radio telescope project, designed for
addressing the problems in the physics of
the solar corona, was conceived at the beginning of the 1960s with the purpose of switching over from recording
of active regions and flares using their integral
emission to a systematic study of the atmospheric structure of active regions, the spatio-temporal processes
of emergence of magnetic fluxes and their
interaction, to identification of flare buildup signatures, and to the localization of energy storage and release
regions. Incidental observations of solar eclipses,
when high angular resolution at least in one coordinate was achieved, did not answer these questions.
The project was aimed at achieving an
angular resolution an order of magnitude higher than existing radioheliographs. On this basis, we hoped for a detailed
study of the development of events in
the corona at the background of the solar disk, for a possibility of improving the scientific framework of flare prediction, as
well as expecting to come nearer to the study of the
mechanism of development of flares and accompanying events. It must be remarked that neither
experience nor adequate financial and
technological means were available to us. For that reason, we had to develop the project phase by phase, submit it to official
expert examination and carry out the
prototype testing of design solutions until, in the 1970s, we were able to embark on the construction of the instrument that was
named the Siberian Solar Radio Telescope
(SSRT) [1, 2].