Cosmonautics museums are one of the first where children begin to take. In general, you can visit them all your life. After all, the development of space does not stop.

Best museums of cosmonautics in Russia. Center for Cosmonautics and Aviation in Moscow

Perhaps one of the largest museums in Russia. 120 samples of aerospace technology have been collected on a gigantic area. Remarkably, these samples have never been exhibited anywhere before.

In addition, visitors will see exhibits from defense industry enterprises.

For history buffs over 2000 rare archival documents and photographs. More than 50 exhibits were made specially for the center.

The complex consists of three exhibition areas.

• KB-1. Cosmic Boulevard “is a grandiose part. Just imagine: full-scale exhibits and full-size models of spacecraft are on display here. Visitors will see amazing projects of the 20th century, embodied in reality, and the achievements of Russian astronautics.
• KB-2. Design Bureau ”presents achievements, research in medicine, astronomy and biology in the space field.
• KB-3. Cosmodrome of the Future ”is about modern space, forecasts of futurists and science fiction writers for the near future. If you love incredible ideas and believe in their implementation do not pass by. The exposition will tell about the development of technology.

There is an interactive part where you can try your hand at game simulators and visit the 5D cinema “Space Sphere”.

Moscow Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics

The history of the development of domestic space can be studied here in all details. The main tip is to take a guided tour. Without it, there is a great chance to pass by very interesting things. And here are collected so many rarities and interesting exhibits! Some of them flew into space, the other flew from there. Like a collection of meteorites.

On the stands you can see space suits of cosmonauts, the first satellites, lunar rovers, as well as devices on which the brave four-legged conquerors Belka and Strelka went into space.

The base compartment of the Mir space station has also been recreated in the museum. Visitors will also be able to see objects and things that, together with the crews, go to surf the expanses of the Universe. Here you can find space food in tubes and vacuum bags, clothes made of special materials and much more.

The museum has a cinema where you can watch documentaries and videos.

During the quarantine, the museum offers lectures from specialists, and on April 12, on Cosmonautics Day, the Gagarin lesson awaits visitors.

Moscow planetarium

It was closed for sixteen years! And when it opened, there were long queues at the box office for a whole year. In the planetarium, you can not only study the Universe, but also participate in many processes and experiments yourself a huge part of the museum is interactive.

There are two halls. In the classical museum of Urania, they show a mock-up of the automatic interplanetary station Luna-1 (on a scale of 1: 3), a mock-up of the first artificial Earth satellite Sputnik-1, a huge golden ball the star globe of Jan Hevelius, a mock-up of the International Space Station (at a scale of 1:25).

In “Lunarium” you can find out how body weight changes on different planets. To see elementary particles thanks to the Wilson camera, and also to understand what a black hole and weightlessness are. The museum staff will show you how to make a tornado or fog with your own hands, and will also teach you how to distinguish the constellations.

In the warm season, the Sky Park is open an open-air area, where an impressive collection of sundials is collected, from miniature garden ones to giant square ones. There are also Nabokov’s globe and Hipparchus’s globe, Mikhailov’s star map, Copernicus’s planisphere.

In the planetarium, you will see an amazing starry sky. It is recreated by the Zeiss telescope and optical instruments. This is where the romance is free! And watch educational films in the 4D cinema. Dynamic armchairs will complement the volumetric picture. Sitting in them, everyone will feel acceleration, fall or feel the joy of flight.

During quarantine, the museum offers virtual tours and lectures from leading astronomy staff and teachers.

People’s Museum of Yuri Gagarin

Do you know what kind of guy he was? To learn more about the biography of the first cosmonaut, take a look at this museum. It presents the entire path of Yuri Gagarin: from a caster to an astronaut.

The museum was opened in 1965, planning the launch for the arrival of Yuri Alekseevich and his wife in Saratov on the 20th anniversary of the industrial technical school, in which Gagarin studied for four years.

The museum has almost one and a half thousand exhibits. Most of them are associated with pre-cosmic life. On the stands there are original documents, photographs, belongings, Yuri Gagarin’s personal file, his characteristics, and a record of progress. There are also textbooks and fiction from the library of the Saratov technical school, with forms bearing Gagarin’s personal signature.

The exposition also includes the referee’s whistle of Yuri Alekseevich (he had a basketball grade, and was also actively engaged in water skiing), a model of the Yak-18 aircraft, cast by Gagarin as a gift to the instructor of the Saratov flying club.

Museum of Aviation and Cosmonautics. Kondratyuk

Now the museum does not accept visitors due to reconstruction. But when the roof is repaired, curious guests will again appear.

The museum was opened in 1993 and was named after Yuri Kondratyuk, one of the founders of Russian cosmonautics, who calculated the optimal flight path to the Moon back in the 1920s. Later, his work was used by NASA in the lunar program.

The museum is small, it has only two halls “Space” and “Aviation”. Visitors will see the layout of the Plesetsk cosmodrome, the Luna diorama, numerous collections of badges, stamps, postcards on space themes. The “Aviation” hall contains books, documents, models of domestic and foreign aircraft and spacecraft.

Tsiolkovsky State Museum of the History of Cosmonautics

The interesting begins already near the museum. In the open area there is a Vostok launch vehicle a backup of the rocket on which Yuri Gagarin flew into space. The reserve rocket was delivered to Baikonur “for every fireman.” Fortunately, everything went well, and now the rocket can be seen in Kaluga. Due to the reconstruction of the territory, access to the exhibits is limited.

Well, in the museum, the first thing that catches your eye is the bas-reliefs of famous people who thought about space in different centuries Giordano Bruno, Galileo Galilei, Isaac Newton.

The exposition contains the main artifacts of Russian cosmonautics from the first artificial Earth satellite, the first descent vehicles to modern long-term orbital stations. Everyone can see the conditions in which astronauts have been in orbit for many months.

On the “Exploration of the Moon” model, you can see special marks denoting devices that have visited the Earth satellite at different times Russian and American.

Space enthusiasts will learn more about the designers and see the collection of rocket engines.

The museum’s planetarium regularly hosts lectures with visual effects. The museum has a model of the planetarium of the German company “Carl Zeiss”, which allows showing full-dome programs with a surprisingly plausible imitation of the presence in space.

House of Aviation and Astronautics

This museum was opened by the pilot-cosmonaut Alexei Leonov in 1969. The exposition of the House of Aviation and Cosmonautics is located both on the street (where you can see combat and training aircraft, including MIG and Su), and under a roof.

The exposition includes the cabin of a multi-seat spacecraft of the Voskhod series, artificial earth satellites, Lunokhod-2, Mars-3, and Luna-16.

Of course, there are pilot suits and spacesuits, as well as the kids’ favorite stand with “space” food.

The museum has a small planetarium. There, everyone who wants to see what the astronauts observe during the spacewalk.

Museum of Cosmonautics and Rocket Technology named after Valentin Glushko

In this museum, the emphasis is placed on the contribution to the development of astronautics of St. Petersburg and Leningrad scientists.

The expositions are located in the premises of the Ioannovsky Ravelin. There in 1932-1933 the Gas-Dynamic Laboratory was located the first domestic experimental design organization for the development of rocket engines.

Visitors will also be able to imagine how the working days of cosmonauts go: the exposition has a model of the International Space Station (at a scale of 1:50) and models of the eating area and a hygiene room in the Zvezda service module of the ISS Russian Segment (at a scale of 1: 1).

Museum and Exhibition Center “Space Samara”

One of the youngest space museums in the country, it opened on April 12, 2001. And almost immediately he became famous, having received a victory in the competition “Tourist Brand of the Samara Region”.

The facade of the museum is decorated with a real rocket, which immediately sets the desired mood. Incidentally, this is Europe’s only vertically-mounted Soyuz launch vehicle in assembled form. Near it, absolutely all visitors take a photo as a souvenir.

In the permanent exhibition, you can see a lot of interesting technology that has been in space and find out exactly why it was launched there. The exposition will tell how using space we get mobile communications, predict the weather, create maps and do many more useful and necessary things.

Another museum project is dedicated to the life of astronauts on board the station their work, rest, hygiene procedures, experiments and training.

Of course, a rare visitor will not stop near the stand, where “space” food is presented. Visitors will see a variety of packaging samples, not just the famous tubes used by the first astronauts.

Memorial complex of the USSR pilot-cosmonaut A.G. Nikolaeva

It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the third Soviet cosmonaut Andriyan Nikolaev is the most famous person in Chuvashia. A large memorial complex has been opened 30 kilometers from Cheboksary, in the native village of Adriyan Grigorievich. Visitors can visit the museum of cosmonautics, go to the house-museum of the Nikolaev family and the chapel, stroll through the park with an alley where trees planted by cosmonauts and other famous Shorshel visitors grow.

The Andriyan Nikolaev Museum is a unique place. It contains over six thousand exhibits that tell about the childhood of the cosmonaut and his way to outer space. There is even a corner of the Shorshel seven-year school class and a desk at which the student Nikolayev was sitting. Immediately a letter of commendation to a diligent schoolboy and sheets of the on-board magazine of the Vostok-3 and Soyuz-9 spacecraft, which were filled in by the cosmonaut. You can look at the spacesuit for start and descent and many other things.

One of the largest exhibits in the museum is the chic Soviet ZIS-110 convertible made in 1950. It was in this car that Andriyan Grigorievich was driving through the streets of Cheboksary on September 2, 1962. How exactly it happened is shown in video footage.

Visitors are amazed by the diorama “Man in Outer Space”. There you can see the “Yastreb” spacesuit, the “Granat-1” ground emergency supply, which astronauts use after landing in case of unforeseen circumstances. Be sure to stop here, lift your head to the ceiling, which is made in the form of the sky and admire the stars. Once upon a time, many years ago, little Andriyan Nikolaev also looked at them, not even imagining that he would become closer to them than anyone else.