Russians Mark 50th of Space Launching Site — Soviet Firsts Recalled at Kazakhstan Site

BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan – Scene of Soviet space triumph and tragedy, the Baikonur cosmodrome marked its 50th anniversary Thursday, hailed by the presidents of Russia and Kazakhstan as a technological workhorse on the wind-swept steppes of Central Asia.

At a ceremony celebrating the cosmodrome’s construction in 1955, a decade after the end of World War II, Russian President Vladimir Putin hailed it as “a heroic feat … of the people who had just gone through a devastating war.”

Initially designed as a testing ground for a top-secret Soviet ballistic missile program, Baikonur was a key site in Moscow’s space race with the United States in the 1950s and 1960s, and saw many historic firsts in exploration.

Sputnik, the first satellite to orbit the Earth, blasted off from here in 1957, and Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, was launched from Baikonur in 1961 – 23 days before the United States sent aloft its first astronaut, Alan Shepard.

Baikonur also sent the first woman into space, Valentina Tereshkova, in 1963, and was used for missions that built and maintained the space station Mir in the 1980s and 1990s.

For all the success at Baikonur, there was also disaster: A missile exploded on a launchpad on Oct. 24, 1960, killing 165 workers. The accident was shrouded in Cold War secrecy for 30 years.

After the 1991 Soviet collapse, Kazakhstan inherited the cosmodrome and now leases it to Russia, which uses it as its sole launch site for manned space missions. It is home to the Soyuz rockets that service the international space station, shuttling deliveries, along with Russian cosmonauts and American and European astronauts.

Putin helped lay the foundation for a new joint Russian-Kazakh launch complex, Baiterek. The $400 million complex is expected to be completed in 2008-2009.

——————–

NEW ARMS RACE?

Moscow’s warning on space weapons

Taking aim at the United States, Russia’s defense minister Thursday threatened retaliatory steps if any country puts weapons in space, Russian media reported.

Details

While he mentioned no country by name, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov’s comments reflected persistent wariness over U.S. intentions, despite increased cooperation between the Cold War foes since the Soviet collapse in 1991.

“Russia’s position on this question has not changed for decades: We are categorically against the militarization of space,” the Interfax news agency quoted Ivanov as saying at the Baikonur space facility.

The comments came as the Bush administration reviews U.S. space policy doctrine. Officials said last month that militarization of space was not on the table. But they said U.S. satellites must be protected against new threats that have emerged since the last space policy review, in 1996.

– Associated Press

——————–