Baikonur Cosmodrome Celebrates 50th Anniversary

Today, on 2 June Presidents of Kazakhstan and Russia Nursultan Nazarbayev and Vladimir Putin will arrive at the Baikonur space center to attend the celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the foundation of the Baikonur launching site.

The Kazakh and Russian leaders will lay a symbolic stone in the foundation of the Russian-Kazakh space rocket complex Baiterek, inspect Baikonur facilities and meet the city inhabitants.

Along with the presidents over 1,000 veterans and guests from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan and other states are excepted to attend the celebrations.

Note: The Baikonur Cosmodrome, one of the oldest space launch facility in the world, has been founded in 1955 as the nucleus of Soviet space operations for launching manned spacecraft. It is the launch complex where the Earth's first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, lifted off.

The rocket that lifted the first Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was also launched from Baikonur. The Russian Federation has leased it until 2050.

Translated by Nataliya Shirinskikh