Baikonur Cosmodrome
The name Baikonur was chosen to intentionally mislead the West as to the actual location of the site by suggesting that the site was near Baikonur, a mining town about 320 km northeast of the space centre in the desert area near Dzhezkazgan. Its geographic coordinates are {{coor|{
Baikonur was the chief operations center of the Soviets' ambitious space program from the late 1950s through the '80s and is equipped with complete facilities for launching both manned and unmanned space vehicles. It supports the largest range of launch vehicles: Soyuz, Proton, Tsyklon, Dnepr and Zenit. It plays an essential role in the deployment and routine operation of the International Space Station.
The official founding date of the site is considered June 2, 1955. It was originally built as a long-range-missile centre and later expanded to include space-flight facilities. A supporting town was built around the facility to provide apartments, schools and support for workers. It was raised to city status in 1966 and named Leninsk, but later renamed Baikonur in 1995.
Many historic flights originated in Baikonur: the first artificial satellite in October 4, 1957, the first manned orbital flight by Yuri Gagarin in 1961, and the flight of the first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova in 1963.
The program continued after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, under the auspices of the Commonwealth of Independent States. 8th June 2005 the Russian Federation Council ratified an agreement between Russia and Kazakhstan on development of cooperation in the effective use of the spaceport Baikonur. The agreement extends Russia’s rent term of the spaceport Baikonur till 2050. The rent makes 115 million US dollars a year.
Due to the long-running dispute between Russia and Kazakhstan on the level of payments for the lease of the cosmodrome, Russia began expanding its own Plesetsk Cosmodrome in the Arkhangelsk Oblast of Northern Russia.
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