Yuri Gagarin Cosmonauts Training Center

The Cosmonaut Training Center was inaugurated on January 11, 1960 in Star City outside Moscow. Although Star City is the official translation of its name, the diminutive 'Starry Township' is more accurate. In 1969 it was named after Yuri Gagarin in memoriam of the first man flown to space. In 1995 Cosmonaut Training Center and Air Force Test and Training regiment were merged and reorganized into "Yu.A.Gagarin State Scientific Research-and-Testing Cosmonaut Training Center" ("GCTC", "Российский Государственный Научно-Исследовательский Испытательный Центр Подготовки Космонавтов (РГНИИЦПК) им. Ю. А. Гагарина"). The Center belongs to and is run by the Russian Ministry of Defense in cooperation with Russian Federal Space Agency. Currently under command of Lieutenant General Vasily V. Tsibliyev (Василий Васильевич Циблиев). In this facility cosmonauts are trained for their space missions. It also has the largest of three cosmonauts' units in Russia, and more than half of Russian cosmonauts belong to that unit.

The Center has also trained candidates from other countries of (or aligned to) the former Soviet block under "Интеркосмос" ("Interkosmos") program, which got the initial boost from a joint Soviet-American "Soyuz-Apollo" flight in 1975 (where Soviet and Russian sources still list it as a "Soyuz-Apollo" ("Союз-Аполлон"), and the American ones - "Apollo-Soyuz" mission). The Interkosmos program later included staff members from some other countries as well (France, India, etc.) and provided ground work for a next step in continued and ongoing cooperation between Russia and the United States in joint space missions and for cross-training of US astronauts on Russian hardware in the framework of Space Shuttle-Mir station and ISS programs.

Key GCTC facilities include:
*Full-size mockups of all major spacecraft developed since the former Soviet Union time, from Soyuz to Buran vehicles, from TKS modules to orbital stations in Salyut Program, Mir and ISS, that were coexisting or with time replacing each other inside 2 main training hangar halls of the Center.
*A water pool for simulating weightlessness (neutral buoyancy) for EVA (spacewalk) training. In 1980 it was replaced with a larger hydrolaboratory building with a tank capable of accommodating a 20-ton space station module. The pool has depth of 12 meters, diameter of 23 meters and capacity of 5,000 cubic meters.
*Zero-gravity training aircraft for simulating weightlessness, including Mig-15 UTI, Tu-104 and later IL-76 MDK with internal volume of 400 cubic meters. Training aircraft is homed at Russian Air Force base at Chkalovskiy airfield (Airport Chkalovskiy).
*Two centrifuges, large TsF-18 and a smaller TsF-7, designed to imitate G-forces during liftoff.
*Medical observation clinic and testing facility.
*A planetarium built in East Germany, capable of projecting as many as 9,000 stars.
*The original office of Yuri Gagarin and a number of monuments and busts to him and other cosmonauts.

External links

* [http://www.gctc.ru/eng/index.html Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center]
* [http://www.gctc.ru/eng/facility/aircraft_e.htm Training aircraft] at GCTC.