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Home/3. DESTINATIONS/3.1. MOSCOW/10. Surroundings of Moscow/

Star City Moscow, where the cosmonauts live – What to see inside?

Gagarin, Sputnik, Laika, Soyuz are words that recall the space race between the Soviet Union and the United States, that lasted from the late 50’s to 1975.

  • While the Apollo XI and Neil Armstrong were the first to reach the Moon in 1969, the real pioneers of space exploration were the Soviet cosmonauts, taking the first satellite, the first human being and the first orbital station into space.
  • These cosmonauts were trained in Star City, a secret place in those years, and that still works today and can be visited.

Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center - Star City - Aerial View

I'm going to talk about ...

1. Star City

Flag of Star City Moscow
Star City Moscow Flag

Star City (or Zvyozdni Gorodok in Russian) is the training center where Russian cosmonauts were trained to be the first to get to space.

Since the end of the 60s, this training center is called Yuri Gagarin (abbreviated GCTC), in memory of the first cosmonaut to travel to outer space.

Sergei Pavlovich Korolev was the architect of the training programs for the cosmonauts, who were subjected to hard exercises to improve their mental and physical resistance.

Star City became a laboratory in which the experiments with the future cosmonauts were carried out.

The different exploits carried out by the Russian cosmonauts placed Star City at the forefront of the space race, innovation and technology.

In the eighties and nineties, the space policy suffered a great stagnation. However, the participation of investment capital from European countries and the United States made it possible to start new joint projects

Currently, cosmonauts of the Russian Federal Space Agency (and former Soviet Space Program), as well as their families, live in this secret city, which has schools, institutes, cinemas, theaters, sports facilities, a train station and a museum of the space age where you can find a statue of Laika, the little dog, the first animal to orbit around the earth.

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The current population of this city is about 5,500 inhabitants

  • Official website (in Russian): http://www.gctc.ru/
  • Official website (in English): http://www.gctc.su/
  • Virtual tour: http://www.gctc.su/main.php?id=152

Yuri Gagarin Research and Test Cosmonaut Center

Real-scale model of the MIR space station

Hydrolaboratory spatial weightlessness

2. Location of Star City

It is located about 40 kilometers northeast of the city of Moscow. This small town didn’t appear in past decades on any map, since it was a secret and restricted place, as it was the training base for Russian cosmonauts during the Cold War era.

3. It is possible to visit Star City?

Yes. Even though it continues to be a quite secretive place, since it is still the training place of the cosmonauts, it is already possible to visit it by means of a special permission.

Obtaining the permit is not complicated, though it must be requested 1 month in advance before the Russian authorities, through one of the agencies that are responsible for private tours.

For example, through the GetYourGuide platform it is possible to hire the Star City Guided Tour (in English). For this excursion you must dedicate 1 whole day and the visit is made only on working days in small groups. It costs from 13,246 rubles per person, and it includes the guide and the hotel pick-up.

During the tour you will see a full-scale model of the MIR space station, the largest centrifugal machine in the world (which reproduces the G force that the cosmonauts experience during each of the phases of space flight) or the hydro-laboratory to simulate space weightlessness.

Moscow - Star City Guided Tour - Moscow Russia - GetYourGuide

 

 

¿ Have you visited the City of Stars? What has been your experience? Below you can leave your comments

 

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Written by:
Irena Domingo
Published on:
March 7, 2019
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Categories: 10. Surroundings of Moscow, 3.1. MOSCOW

About Irena Domingo

Hello, my name is Irena. I was born in Russia in 1974 during the Soviet era. I worked as a Russian teacher and as a translator and interpreter for the past 20 years. One of my main hobbies is traveling. I started this blog with one aim: to create the most comprehensive guide ever written for traveling to Russia and beyond.

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Hi, I’m Irena Domingo. I was born in Russia in 1974 during the Soviet era. I started this blog with one aim: to create the most comprehensive guide ever written for traveling to Russia and beyond.

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