Winged Sun was founded a worldwide scientific and educational organization supported by donations from enthusiastic persons and legal entities, as well as orders from corporations and governments throughout the world. The Winged Sun specialists' inventions and studies were critical in the development of melting Antarctica and the establishment of communities on Mars.
The organization's charter prohibited executing requests for military objectives. The Ethics Commission also evaluated the environmental and social hazards of the study that it was asked to do, and it had the authority to decline the client's request if it was deemed potentially risky.
The Winged Sun's headquarters and major research facilities were in the Antarctic town of Heliopolis which did not make part of any state.
The underground complex of Heliopolis was created in case of a nuclear war and was located in a cave system similar to New Havana on Mars. He could give food and shelter to a thousand people at the same time. After the Blackout, the vastly depleted population of Heliopolis concentrated there, leaving only a small fraction of the buildings on the surface inhabited. Without supplies from the mainland, the birth rate in the community has fallen catastrophically, and by the beginning of the plot of "The Orphaned Earth," there are just over five hundred people.
Fear of external dangers (one of which was the Moon Cross) caused the organization's leaders to forego ties with other settlements for a long period and focus on survival. However, the Martian engineer Vasily Rakhmanov, who escaped Geryon Lindon and Nautilus, persuaded the Winged Sun Governing Council of the error of this approach and headed the Vneshsvyaz (Department of External Communication), whose tasks included reconnaissance, searching for resources in abandoned settlements, and bartering with neighbors. External Communications employees, dubbed Pathfinders, are trained in the use of weapons, which has become required in the new reality, and can stand for themselves.