advoumnaya

28.02.2022 15:12 •  Английский язык

FROM BAIKONUR TO THE STARS
The Baikonur Cosmodrome was built in the 1_. It
was the first cosmodrome in the world, and it is still the
largest and the busiest. It is located in the desert steppe
in Kazakhstan, about?__ km east of the Aral Sea.
A lot of space missions are launched from the
cosmodrome every year. Both Sputnik ? (the Earth's
first artificial satellite) and Vostok 1 (the first spacecraft
with a man on board) were launched from Gagarin's
Start at Baikonur.
The first Kazakh astronaut, Toktar Aubakirov, flew from
Gagarin's Start in 1991. He was a member of the 4
expedition to the Mir space station. Another Kazakh
astronaut, Talgat Musabayev, flew three missions – in
1994, 1998 and 5 _. In 2007, he became the head of
the Kazakh space agency KazCosmos.
Gagarin's Start, which is named after Yuri Gagarin, is
also the launch site for International Space Station
(ISS) missions. In 6 the astronaut Aidyn Aimbetov
was selected to fly on the Soyuz TMA-18M spacecraft
to the ISS. This was the ? launch from Gagarin's
Start. The launch was in 2015, but Aimbetov's journey
to space began more than twelve years earlier. In
he was sent to study in Star City in Russia. This is where
astronauts are trained. The training isn't easy. 'Flying
into space is not like buying a theatre ticket,' Aimbetov
said. After
years of training, he returned to
Kazakhstan in 2009 to work for KazCosmos. He always
wanted to travel into space under the Kazakh flag, and
his dream finally came true on 10 September 2015. ​