On 12 April 1961, Yuri Gagarin climbed into a small capsule called Vostok 1 at Baikonur and roared off into the sky. His journey lasted 108 minutes — just under two hours — and he travelled all the way around the Earth once before landing back safely. He described looking down at our planet as seeing 'a beautiful blue marble'.
The cosmodrome covers an area bigger than many cities. It has dozens of launch pads, railway tracks for moving enormous rockets, and a whole town nearby where engineers and astronauts prepare for missions. Rockets are transported horizontally by train and then slowly raised to vertical before launch day.
Baikonur has sent thousands of missions into space — weather satellites, space stations, telescopes, and crews of astronauts from many different countries. The famous International Space Station (ISS), where astronauts from all around the world live and work together, was largely built from pieces launched from here.
Today Kazakhstan is building its own brand-new spaceport called Baiterek (named after the Astana tower) at Baikonur. The goal is to launch the next generation of Kazakh rockets from Kazakh soil — continuing the country's proud tradition as a gateway to the stars.