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This answer links to an Wikipedia article on the Molniya satellites, which shows the image below of Molniya 1, and what looks like a large structure behind it. The structure appears to be long and slightly concave rather than flat.

What is that structure, or what does it represent?

Image from here

enter image description here

uhoh
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It seems to be the roof of Cosmos Pavilion at VDNKh in Moscow.

For many years (~1967-1994) the Pavilion hosted the large exhibition of spacecrafts and space related artifacts.

There are much better quality photos of the same scene (if not the same angle) available online. See for example the 1969 color slides by David C. Cook.

enter image description here The work by David C. Cook. Reproduced verbatim under the terms of CC BY-NC-SA

The Space and Aviation Pavilion has reopened in 2018.

  • Excellent! Thanks for tracking that down. The links are excellent and the photography is wonderful, something I've never seen before! I noticed that this photo and at least some others have a creative commons license, which - I believe - says you can paste it (and maybe others) directly into your answer. The many small panels appear to be windows looking at the sky. – uhoh Apr 22 '16 at 05:13
  • The outside of the curving window "arrays" can be seen here. – uhoh Apr 22 '16 at 05:26
  • Glad to hear about the reopening! I wish I could go :-) – uhoh May 15 '21 at 04:36
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The image caption says "Molniya-1 satellite in a museum", so that's the museum roof.

A large structure indeed!

Juancho
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  • ...maybe! This links to here but it's not so clear to me what I'm looking at. Is this an old monochrome photo of a museum exhibit? Do you think this is really a roof, or just another random display item? – uhoh Apr 22 '16 at 02:14