Tsiolkovsky State Museum of the History of Cosmonautics
Encyclopedia
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Museum
A museum is an institution that cares for a collection of artifacts and other objects of scientific, artistic, cultural, or historical importance and makes them available for public viewing through exhibits that may be permanent or temporary. Most large museums are located in major cities...
in the world dedicated to the history of space exploration
Space exploration
Space exploration is the use of space technology to explore outer space. Physical exploration of space is conducted both by human spaceflights and by robotic spacecraft....
. It was opened on 3 October 1967 in Kaluga
Kaluga
Kaluga is a city and the administrative center of Kaluga Oblast, Russia, located on the Oka River southwest of Moscow. Population: It is served by Grabtsevo Airport.-History:...
, and is named after Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky was an Imperial Russian and Soviet rocket scientist and pioneer of the astronautic theory. Along with his followers the German Hermann Oberth and the American Robert H. Goddard, he is considered to be one of the founding fathers of rocketry and astronautics...
, a school master and rocket science
Aerospace engineering
Aerospace engineering is the primary branch of engineering concerned with the design, construction and science of aircraft and spacecraft. It is divided into two major and overlapping branches: aeronautical engineering and astronautical engineering...
pioneer who lived most of his life in this city. The driving force behind the creation of the museum was Sergei Korolyov, chief designer of RKK Energiya. The building was designed by Boris Barkhin, Evgeny Kireev, Nataliya Orlova, Valentin Strogy and Kirill Fomin, and the cornerstone was laid by Yuri Gagarin
Yuri Gagarin
Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin was a Soviet pilot and cosmonaut. He was the first human to journey into outer space, when his Vostok spacecraft completed an orbit of the Earth on April 12, 1961....
on 13 June 1961. The museum has over 100,000 visitors per year and has 127 employees, of whom 43 are curators.
Main exposition
The exposition of the museum consists of two parts. The first part is dedicated to the ideas and research of Tsiolkovsky, and shows a model of the rocket designed by Tsiolkovsky as well as copies of his scientific work. The second part contains mock-ups of space craft like Sputnik 1Sputnik 1
Sputnik 1 ) was the first artificial satellite to be put into Earth's orbit. It was launched into an elliptical low Earth orbit by the Soviet Union on 4 October 1957. The unanticipated announcement of Sputnik 1s success precipitated the Sputnik crisis in the United States and ignited the Space...
and samples of moon dust. Just outside the museum is a rocket park, which contains amongst others a R-7
R-7 Semyorka
The R-7 was a Soviet missile developed during the Cold War, and the world's first intercontinental ballistic missile. The R-7 made 28 launches between 1957 and 1961, but was never deployed operationally. A derivative, the R-7A, was deployed from 1960 to 1968...
rocket.
Tsiolkovsky house
In the outskirts of Kaluga is the wooden house in which Tsiolkovsky lived. In 1936, one year after his death, this house was turned into a memorial house museum and is now part of the museum organization.The museum also incorporates a scientific effort to study the life and works of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. The Annual Tsiolkovsky Readings and Conference is organized by the museum.