The station was at first part of the Almaz program, to make a secret military station in space. On 16 February 1970 it was decided to make it civilian instead. The Soviet space program gave the name DOS to the program. That is an abbreviation of the Russian "Dolgovremennaya Orbitalnaya Stanziya" which in English means "Long Term Orbital Station". The first station was called DOS-1 by the people working on space program. To the public, it was to be known as Zarya but was changed to Salyut before launch. Salyut is the Russian word for salute and was given to honor Yuri Gagarin.