Visit to Kaluga. Space Exploration Museum.Tsiolkovsky Museum

KALUGA. Motherland of Cosmonautics

Route: Sightseeing tour, Tsiolkovsky Museum, Space Exploration museum
October 4, 2015

Kaluga was founded in the mid-14th century as a border fortress on the southwestern borders of the Grand Duchy of Moscow. Small town of Kaluga in Moscow Region integrates well preserved 18th century Classicist urban area with memory about scientists who made first steps for outer space exploration. Here lived in late 19th - early 20th century a school teacher Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, who is considered to be one of the founding fathers of rocketry and astronautics. His works later inspired leading Soviet rocket engineers such as Sergei Korolyov and Valentin Glushko and contributed to the success of the Soviet space program.

Tsiolkovsky Museum

Tsiolkovsky Museum is a small blue wooden house in Georgievskaya Street, 16 where Konstantin Tsiolkovsky lived and worked in 1893-1902.

State Museum of the History of Cosmonautics (Space Exploration museum)

Exhibitions of this museum acquaint the visitor with the history of ballooning, aviation and rocket-and-space technology. It was opened on 3 October 1967 in Kaluga, and is named after Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. The driving forces behind the creation of the museum were Sergei Korolyov and Yuri Gagarin. This the first museum in the world dedicated to the history of space exploration. The museum is one of the largest in the world and the biggest in Russia devoted to these topics. Scientific heritage of Tsiolkovsky is especially well represented here.

The museum building is also worth to mention. Its style is futuristic, the space around it is decorated with first Soviet rockets, including booster of Vostok: such rocket delivered Yuri Gagarin to orbit in 1961 after his "here we go!".

Date of visit to Kaluga: October 4, 2015 (Sunday)
Start: 8-00, IKI RAS , Moscow
Time to travel to Kaluga: approximately 3.5 hours
Time of excursion program: approximately 4 hours
Time to travel from Kaluga: approximately 4 hours
End: 21-00, IKI RAS, Moscow
Price: 55 euro (transfer+excursion) + 25 euro (lunch)
Contact person: Julia Brekhovskikh
E-mail: Social.programm2015@gmail.com (note "Social program")