Get to know Baikonur Cosmodrome, the world’s first spaceport and Russia’s gateway to space.
GISTDA, Geo-informatics and Space Technology Development Agency
Delivering values from space
Baikonur Cosmodrome is the oldest and largest spaceport in the world, and it served as Russia’s gateway to space, along with multiple missions from its partner nations, including United States astronauts to the International Space Station.
This spaceport served as the launch site of Sputnik 1, the first-ever satellite ever launched into Earth orbit on October 4, 1957. It was also the launch site of Vostok 1, with Yuri Gagarin becoming the first person to orbit the Earth successfully and landing safely on April 12, 1961.
Baikonur Cosmodrome was constructed in 1955 on the Kazakh Steppe, as the Soviet Union’s military test site for its secret ICBM project. It was designated as Scientific Research Test Range No. 5 or NIIP-5 in Russian, before the expansion to include facilities for spaceflights.
Building a spaceport in Kazakhstan, which was part of the Soviet Union, was due to the advantage of gaining more Earth’s rotational speed near the equator, as well as the remoteness of the Kazakh Steppe from populated area. Baikonur Cosmodrome was also surrounded by plains land, to suit the ground stations for receiving signals from rockets and satellites without interruptions.
Since supporting the first launch of Sputnik 1 in 1957, Baikonur Cosmodrome has witnessed and supported multiple Russian space missions, for example, Vostok, Soyuz, Proton, Venera, Mars, and Luna.
Nowadays, the spaceport consists of 15 launch facilities, along with 11 assembly and integration sites, with multiple support facilities situated in an area larger than 6,717 kilometers. Baikonur Cosmodrome has an intra-site railway network with a total track length of more than 470 kilometers, which is used to transport rockets and spacecraft to the launchpad.
One of the infamous launches in Pad 1/5, also known as the Gagain’s Start, was the launch facility for the world’s first satellite, Sputnik 1, and Yuri Gagarin’s Vostok 1 mission in 1961. Pad 1/5 also supported all crewed missions to the Mir space station and continuously launched astronauts to the International Space Station until the Soyuz MS-15 mission in 2019, where it was then preserved as part of the spaceport’s museum.
ROSCOSMOS, the state corporation of space activities of the Russian Federation, continues to manage and oversee launch operations at Baikonur Cosmodrome under a lease contract from Kazakhstan until 2050.
With the fixed cost of 115 million USD per year to lease this spaceport, Russia has decided to build the Vostochny Cosmodrome in the far east region known as Amur Oblast, to reduce its dependency on the historic Baikonur Cosmodrome, which is situated in the land of Kazakhstan. The Vostochny Cosmodrome has now supported the launch of 12 missions, including the Luna-25, which failed during its soft Lunar landing attempt in August 2023.
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The Geo-Informatics and Space Technology Development Agency (GISTDA), in collaboration with the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI), is currently exploring the possibility of having a spaceport in Thailand. The spaceport will be the foundation of Thailand’s space infrastructure, which will drive the development of the economy, jobs, and space industry of Thailand.
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