posted 04-12-2009 07:15 PM               

Russia reopens enlarged cosmonauts museum

Russia on Sunday (April 12, 2009) reopened its Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics after three years of renovation and expansion work. The Moscow museum, opened on the annual Cosmonauts Day, is four times as large as the previous facility.

Moscow mayor Yuri Luskhov said at the opening ceremonies that Russia now had a museum where people could grasp the "magnificence of space." There was nothing comparable to it anywhere else in the world.

April 12 is celebrated every year as Cosmonauts Day, marking the April 12, 1961 first-ever successful flight in space by a human, when Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin orbited the earth.

The 8,000-square-metre Russian space museum features some 3,500 exhibits focusing on Soviet and Russian space exploration and research. Among others, there is a full scale model of the Soviet-era space station Mir, which visitors can walk through.

The museum also includes a cinema and classrooms for visits by schoolchildren, as well as a shop selling space food items.

posted 04-28-2009 08:44 PM               

A screeching group of children excitedly dragged their parents inside a life-size model of the Russian space station Mir.

"You can go inside the exhibits, touch everything," said Olga Redenko, whose son and daughter were some of the first visitors to the newly reopened space museum. "They love it!"

Located under the monument of a rocket permanently swooping into the air, the museum is now three times bigger, with numerous interactive exhibits and, a rarity in Moscow, handicapped access.

"It is even more modern than the [space] museum in Washington," boasted Anatoly Perminov, head of the Federal Space Agency, at the opening earlier this month.

posted 05-26-2009 09:58 PM               

With a 360-ft.-high (110 m) steel flame swooping up from its roof, topped by a Jetsons-esque rocket, Moscow's Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics has opened again, after more than three years of expansion and renovation -- one small step in Russia's effort to claim a more prominent place on the world stage by highlighting its past glory in space exploration.

"We wanted to build the new museum bigger and better, but the first goal was to remind young people of our glorious history, history that is being forgotten," says Alexander Laveikin, a deputy director of the museum and one of the first cosmonauts to have lived aboard the Mir space station. Besides serving as a memorial to the past, the museum, which reopened in March, is also part of a government effort to get young Russians interested in science and technology. "If five or 10 years ago, everyone wanted to be in business, now they are interested in technology -- and our museum is playing a big part in that," says Laveikin. "After the financial crisis ends, they won't be interested in fast money anymore. Now we need to forget about business and oil and focus on rejuvenating our technology sector."

posted 06-12-2009 03:14 PM               

How about paying a visit to Russian Space exploration museum? If it seems like a good idea then come inside for it.

posted 09-30-2009 11:16 AM            

I've looked at the photo several times with an uneasy feeling until it just now made "click!" Leonov's ship is incorrectly named "Восток-2" (Vostok 2), that was German Titov's flight. Leonov's was "Восход-2" (Voskhod 2).

posted 12-24-2013 10:08 PM               

The museum has trebled in size and has a large collection of flown spacecraft and models. Most aspects of Russian manned spaceflight are included. Also a mock up of Tsiolkovsky's study.

posted 02-11-2014 01:10 PM               

The details behind the former cosmonaut's firing are not clear, but may have to do with disagreements between the museum's staff and its management, including how the museum's funds were being spent and "damage to museum collections" (per an automated translation).

posted 11-09-2018 10:06 AM               

Congratulations to my good friend Fyodor Yurchikhin! He will be the new President of the amazing Cosmonautics Museum in Moscow. You just can't pick a better person to share the story of space exploration, and to inspire the next generation.

posted 09-18-2019 08:25 AM               

I noticed a Michael Collins suit on level 1. I'm not able to read the information sign, does anyone know more about it?

posted 09-18-2019 01:01 PM               

I will say it is not easy to get to. We planned to take the Moscow subway, which is excellent but daunting because of the language barrier. While many people in Moscow do speak English, the subway signs are in Russian, and the museum is some distance from our hotel near Red Square. We took one of those hop on hop off buses which let out right in front of the museum.

Because of the rain and Moscow traffic, give yourself at least an hour if you are trying to get there from Central Moscow. And if you do select one of the hop of hop off buses make sure you don't take the last bus of the day around 5pm or you will have to make your own way back using taxi or subway which as I said is not easy task. Moscow has an amazing subway, but is can be confusing.

posted 12-15-2021 09:16 AM            

Today we have a real guest from space: the Soyuz TMA-12M lander, in which cosmonauts Alexander Skvortsov and Oleg Artemyev and American astronaut Steven Swanson flew to the ISS in 2014! ‍

Thank State Corporation Roscosmos and RSC Energia for such a gift!