Selected activities aimed to investigate cosmic ray fluxes and to contribute to the understanding of the mechanisms behind, over a long-time period using space research tools in the former USSR/Russia and Slovakia, are reviewed, and some of the results obtained are presented. As the selection is connected with the institutes where the authors are working, it represents only a partial review of this wide topic. 1. Some Milestones until the Middle of the Last Century The investigation of cosmic rays began in 1900-1901, more than 100 years ago. During the first ten years the researchers were not aware that what they were studying were cosmic rays. All began at the time of measurements of the conductivity of various gases including the air, when some “residual” ionization, that is, a weak “dark current,” was observed even without ionizing sources. First publications of those experiments relate to the period of 1900-1901 [1–3]. One of the first researchers of the “dark current” was Charles Wilson, well known as the inventor of Wilson chamber (1911), which was widely used for studying various types of radiation, including cosmic rays. Later, in 1927, Wilson received the Nobel Prize in physics for this finding. Thanks to those experiments it became clear that at sea level some not intense but strongly penetrating radiation is always present (which was also observed in strongly shielded chambers). At the beginning it was thought that the radiation is emanating from the soil, similarly to Earth’s radioactivity, and that is why it must be declining above the Earth’s surface. However, the radiation was decreasing just up to the altitude about one km, while above this level its intensity was increasing. The fact that radiation intensity increases with altitude was discovered in 1912 after by the experiments of the Austrian physicist Hess [4], who measured radiation by ionization chamber up to more than 5？km. Hess called it “altitude radiation.” This name was used until 1925. The nature of that radiation was not clarified for a long time. Several hypotheses of its origin have been proposed (e.g., it originated in the upper layers of the atmosphere due to atmospheric electricity). Finally, the extraterrestrial origin of “altitude radiation” was proved by Millikan et al. (USA) in 1923-1924, who introduced the term “cosmic rays” [5, 6]. At that time Millikan was already awarded the Nobel Prize (in 1923 for the measurement of the charge of electron). Cosmic rays remained the “mystery effect” for a rather long time. This is argued by the fact that Nobel Prize for his
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