Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center

The site of the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center

The Cosmonaut Training Center "JA Gagarin" ( Russian Центр подготовки космонавтов имени Ю. А. Гагарина , transliteration : . Central Podgotowki Kosmonawtow imeni Ju A. Gagarina ., Abbr ЦПК / ZPK ) was on 11. January 1960 in Star City (Russian Звёздный Городок ) outside Moscow opened. In 1968 it was given its current name in honor of the first man in space , the cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin .

The center was assigned to the Russian Ministry of Defense until 2009 and since then to the Roscosmos space agency . As the largest of the three Russian cosmonaut facilities, it houses more than half of all Russian space travelers.

Facilities

The center has a wide range of training opportunities for space travelers:

In the main hall of the center there are full-size replicas of all the important spaceships that were developed in the former Soviet Union , from Soyuz to Buran , from the TKS spaceship to the Mir to the ISS .
There is a pool of water for simulating weightlessness when training outboard activities (EVA). In 1980 it was replaced by a larger hydro laboratory that can accommodate space station modules weighing up to 20 tons. The basin has a depth of 12 meters, a diameter of 23 meters and a volume of 5,000 cubic meters.
Aircrafts are also used to simulate weightlessness, mainly Mig-15 UTI , Tupolev Tu-104 and later the Ilyushin Il-76 MDK with an interior space of 400 cubic meters.
The g-forces during the rocket launch are simulated with two centrifuges , the large TsF-18 and a small TsF-7.
A planetarium comes from the GDR , which can project up to 9,000 stars.