Kazakhstan Reclaims Historic ‘Gagarin’s Start’ Soviet Space Launch Pad

Kazakhstan is set to take back control of the historic Gagarin’s Start launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome from Russia by 1 June 2025, marking a symbolic shift in the management of the Soviet-era spaceport and its future use.

The decommissioned pad, which hosted the launches of Sputnik 1 and Yuri Gagarin, will be turned into a museum and tourism hub rather than revived for modern rockets.​

Lead and overview

Russia has agreed to return the legendary Gagarin’s Start complex (Baikonur Site 1/5) to Kazakhstan in the first half of 2025, with the handover due to be finalized by 1 June. The launch pad has been idle since 2019, when it was retired because it could not safely support the newer Soyuz‑2 rockets, which now launch from another Baikonur platform. Kazakhstan’s government says it plans to transform the site of the world’s first crewed spaceflight into an open‑air museum and visitor complex, rather than keep it as an operational pad.​

Officials in Astana frame the move as both heritage preservation and a step toward greater control over Baikonur, which Russia leases until 2050 under a long‑term agreement worth about 115 million dollars a year. Moscow, meanwhile, has shifted many commercial launches to its domestic Plesetsk and Vostochny cosmodromes, reducing its reliance on Baikonur and opening the way to give up facilities it no longer needs. Russian and Kazakh officials say nine launches are still planned from Baikonur in 2025, underscoring that the wider spaceport will continue to operate even as iconic sites change status.​

History and significance of Gagarin’s Start

Gagarin’s Start, also known as Site 1 or Site 1/5, is the launch pad from which the Soviet Union sent both the first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, and the first human, Yuri Gagarin, into space. Built in the late 1950s as part of the Baikonur Cosmodrome in what was then the Kazakh Soviet republic, it became the centerpiece of the early space race and remained Russia’s main crewed launch site for decades after the USSR collapsed. The pad’s status as a global symbol of space exploration is a key reason both Russia and Kazakhstan now emphasize its preservation as a heritage site rather than a purely industrial asset.​

Key milestones for Gagarin’s Start

Kazakh officials say the pad’s retirement in 2019 reflected both safety and cost concerns, as refitting it for Soyuz‑2 would have required extensive modernization and environmental upgrades. The 2021 three‑way framework with the United Arab Emirates aimed to share the costs of such work but stalled amid shifting geopolitics and a re‑evaluation of launch strategies after Russia’s full‑scale invasion of Ukraine.​

Why Kazakhstan is reclaiming the pad

As Russia pivots more of its crewed and commercial missions to Plesetsk in the north and Vostochny in the Far East, it has identified 234 facilities at Baikonur that it no longer needs and has proposed removing them from the lease. Kazakh authorities say they have already agreed to take back 53 of these sites, with Gagarin’s Start the most politically and symbolically important among them. The transfer allows Kazakhstan to repurpose land and infrastructure that might otherwise sit idle while Moscow focuses on newer domestic cosmodromes.​

The move also comes after a series of disputes over unpaid environmental fines and investment delays, including Kazakhstan’s 2023 decision to freeze assets linked to the Baiterek launch complex over a 29.7‑million‑dollar debt tied to rocket pollution claims. Analysts note that while Astana remains formally aligned with Moscow on Baikonur until 2050, it is steadily pushing for more say over how the spaceport is managed and how future investments are structured. The handover of Gagarin’s Start therefore reflects not only technical redundancy but also a gradual rebalancing of control over the site.​

Baikonur today: key figures

Kazakhstan’s plans and what comes next

Kazakhstan’s Digital Development and Aerospace Ministry says Gagarin’s Start will become the core of a museum complex dedicated to the history of space exploration, with exhibits of historic hardware and public access to previously restricted areas. Officials argue that opening the pad to tourists can diversify Baikonur’s economy and enhance Kazakhstan’s soft power, as international visitors and school groups come to see the birthplace of human spaceflight. The museum project is expected to be developed jointly with Russia, even as launch operations gradually concentrate on other pads.​

Beyond heritage, Astana is trying to reposition Baikonur as a platform for its own space ambitions, including the planned Baiterek space complex and a proposed ultra‑light launcher tailored to small satellites. The government has announced plans for a special economic zone around Baikonur focused on national space projects and foreign startups, covering roughly a quarter of the cosmodrome’s territory. At the same time, recent damage to another Baikonur launch pad after a November 2025 Soyuz mission has highlighted the age of much of the infrastructure and the urgency of deciding which assets to modernize and which to preserve as monuments.​