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MSNBC
Russia’s hidden treasures of space
One museum keeps the ship used by world’s first spaceman; another preserves
the dogs that preceded him into orbit
By Alan Boyle
MOSCOW — It’s not listed in the tourist guides, and they won’t let you just walk in the door, but there’s a hidden store of space treasures and kitsch at the Energia Museum of Rocket Space Engineering in Korolyov, just north of Moscow.
YOU CAN TOUCH the dark brown, spherical Vostok craft that Yuri Gagarin rode into history 40 years ago as the first human in space.
Other items include the capsule from which Alexei Leonov made the world’s first spacewalk in 1965, the Soyuz descent capsule that was used in 1975’s Apollo-Soyuz linkup and mock-ups of the two linked spacecraft as well as of a Salyut space station.
You can even climb inside the museum’s Soyuz T-3 — it’s a tight fit for just one person, let alone the three people who rode it back to Earth in 1980.
“I ask people how long they could stay in there,” says museum guide Yelena Dubinko, “and they say five minutes, not more.”
The museum is at the headquarters of the Energia rocket company, which restricts access to outsiders because of security concerns. For that reason, Dubinko says would-be visitors have to call about five days in advance to arrange for a visit.
MEMORIAL MUSEUM
Another space shrine, the Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics, is far more accessible. It’s right underneath Moscow’s 328-foot-high cosmonaut memorial, a short walk from the VDNKh Metro station in the northern part of the city. The compact museum displays something unique: an actual space traveler.
Two cosmo-canines named Belka and Strelka were sent into space aboard a Vostok in 1960, becoming the first creatures to survive orbital flight.
A few months after that flight, Strelka gave birth to six healthy puppies. One of the pups, named Pushinka, was given to Caroline Kennedy as a present from Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. Belka, one of the first creatures to survive a ride into Earth orbit, sits eternally within the Memorial Museum of Astronautics, with reflections playing off the preserved dog's glass case.
Today, thanks to the marvels of taxidermy, Belka sits within a glass case like a lapdog Lenin. Strelka was also preserved, but she is nowhere in sight during this visit.
“Strelka is our travel dog,” museum administrator Galina Kozyr explains. “It was in Australia, America, Israel — and now it’s on display in China.”
Belka seems to gaze wistfully at a Soviet moonsuit that was never used. After NASA’s Neil Armstrong walked on the moon in 1969, Soviet space officials gave up on their own moon effort and decided they didn’t need the spacesuit.
“There was no reason to send people,” Kozyr said. “Everything was prepared, but the program was closed.”
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