Baikonur Cosmodrome

Baikonur Cosmodrome's "Gagarin's Start" Soyuz launch pad prior to the rollout of Soyuz TMA-13, October 10, 2008.

Map showing the location of Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

The Baikonur Cosmodrome (Russian: Космодром Байконур, Kosmodrom Baykonur; Kazakh: Байқоңыр ғарыш айлағы, Bayqoñır ğarış aylağı), also called Tyuratam, is the world's first and largest operational space launch facility. It is located in the desert steppes of Kazakhstan, about 200 kilometers (124 mi) east of the Aral Sea, north of the Syr Darya river, near Tyuratam railway station, at 90 metres above sea level. It is leased by the Kazakh government to Russia (currently until 2050) and is managed jointly by the Russian Federal Space Agency and the Russian Space Forces. The shape of the area leased is an ellipse, measuring 90 kilometres east-west by 85 kilometres north-south, with the cosmodrome at the centre. It was originally built by the Soviet Union in the late 1950s as the base of operations for its ambitious space program. Under the current Russian space program, Baikonur remains a busy space port, with numerous commercial, military and scientific missions being launched annually.^[1]

Vostok 1, the first manned spacecraft in human history, was launched from one of Baikonur's launch pads, which is presently known as Gagarin's Start.

History

Soviet era

U-2 Photograph of R-7 Launch Pad in Tyura-Tam.

The Soviet government issued the decree about Scientific-Research Test Range No. 5 (NIIP-5; Russian: Nauchno-Issledovatel’skii Ispytatel’nyi Poligon N.5) on 12 February 1955. It was actually founded on 2 June 1955, originally being a test center for a first missile of a completely new class — the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), the R-7 Semyorka. NIIP-5 was soon expanded to include launch facilities for space flight. Site was selected by a commission led by Gen. Vasily Voznyuk, influenced by Sergey Korolyov, the Chief Designer of the R-7 ICBM, and soon the man behind Soviet space program. It had to be surrounded by plains, as the radio control system of the rocket required (at the time) receiving uninterrupted signals from ground stations hundreds kilometres away.^[2] Additionally, the missile trajectory had to be away from populated area. Taking these two constrains into consideration, the commission chose Tyuratam, a village in the heart of the Kazakh steppe. The expense of constructing the launch facilities and the several hundred kilometres of new road and train lines made the Cosmodrome one of the most costly infrastructure projects the Soviets undertook. A supporting town was built around the facility to provide housing, schools and support infrastructure for workers. It was raised to city status in 1966 and named Leninsk (presently Baikonur).

The U-2 high-altitude reconnaissance plane found and photographed the Tyuratam missile test range for the first time on 5 August 1957. See a composite satellite image of the early Tyuratam launch complex, the cosmodrome (30 May 1962).

Name

There are conflicting sources about origins of the name "Baikonur". Some sources say that it wasn't until 1961 (i.e. until Gagarin's flight), when the name "Baikonur" was deliberately chosen to misdirect^[2][3] the West to a place about 320 kilometers (199 mi) northeast of the launch center, a small mining town Baikonur near Jezkazgan.

Other sources state that "Baikonur" was a name of the Tyuratam region even before the cosmodrome existed.^[3] Interestingly, the main cosmodrome-supporting town Leninsk was renamed to Baikonur on December 20, 1995 by Boris Yeltsin.

Importance

Many historic flights lifted off from Baikonur: the first operational ICBM; the first man-made satellite, Sputnik 1, on October 4, 1957; the first spacecraft to travel close to the Moon, Luna 1, on January 2 1959; the first manned orbital flight by Yuri Gagarin on April 12, 1961; and the flight of the first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova, in 1963. 14 cosmonauts of 13 other nations, such as Czechoslovakia, East Germany and France, started their historic journeys from here as well under the Interkosmos program. In 1960, a prototype R-16 ICBM exploded before launch, killing over 100 people.

Russian era

Following the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 the Russian space program continued to operate from Baikonur under the auspices of the Commonwealth of Independent States. On June 8, 2005 the Russian Federation Council ratified an agreement between Russia and Kazakhstan extending Russia’s rent term of the spaceport until 2050. The rent price — which is fixed at 115 million US dollars per year — is the source of a long-running dispute between the two countries. That dispute has prompted Russia to begin upgrading its own Plesetsk Cosmodrome in the Arkhangelsk Oblast of Northern Russia as a fallback option.

Features

Baikonur is fully equipped with facilities for launching both manned and unmanned spacecraft. It supports several generations of Russian spacecraft: Soyuz, Proton, Tsyklon, Dnepr, Zenit and Buran. During the temporary lapse of the United States' Space Shuttle program after the Columbia Disaster in 2003 it played an essential role in operating and resupplying of the International Space Station (ISS) with Soyuz and Progress spacecraft. Its high latitude of 46 N required the high orbital inclination of the ISS.

Downrange from the launchpad, spent launch equipment is dropped directly on the ground where it is salvaged by the workers and by the local population.^[4]

List of launchpads

• Pad 1/5 (Gagarin's Start): Soyuz-Soyuz, Soyuz-Progress, Soyuz-Ikar —
• Pad 31/6: Soyuz-Cosmos, Soyuz-Fregat —
• Pad 41/15: Cosmos 3 (1964–1968) —
• Pad 45/1: Zenit-2, Zenit-2M, Zenit-3M —
• Pad 45/2 (Destroyed in 1990 explosion): Zenit 2 —
• Pad 81/23 (81L): Proton-K —
• Pad 81/24 (81P): Proton-M —
• Pad 90/19 (90L) (Inactive >1989): Tsyklon-2 —
• Pad 90/20 (90R): Tsyklon-2 —
• Pad 109/95: Dnepr —
• Pad 110/37 (110L) (inactive after 1988): N-1, Energia-Buran —
• Pad 110/38 (110R): N-1 (inactive after 1969) —
• Pad 175/59: Rokot (1991–1994) —
• Pad 200/39 (200L): Proton-M/Proton-K —
• Pad 200/40 (200R): Proton-K (inactive after 1991) —
• Pad 250 (inactive after 1987): Energia —

ICBM testing

Although Baikonur has always been known around the world as the launch site of Soviet and Russian space missions, from its outset in 1955 and until the collapse of the USSR in 1991, the primary purpose of this center was to test liquid-fueled ballistic missiles. The official (and secret) name of the center was State Test Range No. 5 or 5 GIK. It remained under control of the Soviet and Russian Ministry of Defense until the second half of the 1990s, when the Russian civilian space agency and its industrial contractors started taking over individual facilities.

In 2006, the head of Roskosmos, Anatoly Perminov said the last Russian military personnel would be removed from the Baikonur facility by 2007. However, on Oct. 22 2008 an SS-19 Stiletto missile was test fired from Baikonur, indicating this may not be the case.^[5]

Future projects

On December 22, 2004, Kazakhstan and Russia signed a contract establishing the "Russia-Kazakhstan Baiterek JV" joint venture, in which each country holds a 50-percent stake. The goal of the project is the construction of the Bayterek (poplar tree) space launch complex, to facilitate operations of the Russian Angara rocket launcher.^[6] This will allow launches with a payload of 26 tons to low earth orbit, compared to 20 tons using the Proton system. An additional benefit will be that the Angara uses kerosene as fuel and oxygen as the oxidiser, which is less hazardous to the environment than the toxic fuels used by older boosters. The total expenditure on the Kazakh side will be $223 million over 19 years.^[7] As of 2010, the project is stalling due to insufficient funding. It is thought that the project still has good chances to succeed because it will allow both parties – Russia and Kazakhstan – to continue the joint use of Baikonur even after the Vostochny spaceport is commissioned.^[8]

References

External links

• Baikonur Cosmodrome historical note (in Russian) and historical pictures (2002) on buran.ru — NPO Molniya, maker of Russian space shuttle Buran.
• RussianSpaceWeb.com on Baikonur
• RussianSpaceWeb.com on Angara and Baikonur expansion
• Regions and facilities of Baikonur
• Reuters article on Test firing of ss-19 Missile, October 22, 2008
• Baikonur International Tax Dispute Case by CIS Economic Court
• Baikonur International Tax Dispute Case
• "A Tale of Two Airplanes" by Kingdon R. "King" Hawes, Lt Col, USAF (Ret.)
• Baikonur Launch Tour — vizit to Baikonur Cosmodrome

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