In 1955, the Soviet Union completed the first spacecraft launch site in history: the Baikonur Cosmodrome. Still active today, the cosmodrome is located in Kazakhstan, about thirty kilometers from the city with the same name (until 1995 called Leninsk). The cosmodrome was the scene of grandiose events in Soviet history, such as the launch of the first sputnik (1957), but also of dramatic events such as the Nedelin catastrophe (1960), in which 78 people died due to an explosion.

Baikonur was the core of the ambitious Soviet Space Program until the collapse of the USSR: the first man to travel into space, Juri Gagarin (1961), and the first woman, Valentina Tereskova (1963), departed from Bajkonur Cosmodrome.