Encyclopedia > Baikonur Cosmodrome

  Article Content

Baikonur Cosmodrome

Baikonur Cosmodrome is a Russian spaceport in Kazakstan. It is located about 200km east of the Aral Sea, on the right (north/east) side of the Syr Darya.

It was constructed by the Soviet Union, initially as a test site for intercontinental ballistic missiles. The location is near the Kazak village of Tyuratam which was a station on the main Moscow to Tashkent railway. A new city was constructed to service the cosmodrome; the city was renamed Baikonur in the 1990s. The name "Baikonur" was originally a futile attempt to hide the location of the massive facility, chosen during the publicity of the first manned space mission: the original Baikonur is a mining town a few hundred kilometres northeast.

All Russian manned space missions and launches to geostationary orbit take place at Baikonur.

External link



All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

 
  Search Encyclopedia

Search over one million articles, find something about almost anything!
 
 
  
  Featured Article
Urethra

... of the urethra: Hypospadias[?] is a form of abnormal development of the urethra in the male, where the opening is not quite where it should be (it occurs lower ...

 
 
 
This page was created in 34.3 ms