State Museum of the History of Cosmonautics named after K. E. Tsiolkovsky

About museum

The world's first and Russia's largest museum of the history of cosmonautics named after Konstantin Tsiolkovsky is located in Kaluga. The idea to create it belonged to Sergei Korolev; the first stone in the museum building was laid by Yuri Gagarin. The building was constructed specifically for a technical museum and was designed by architects Boris Barkhin, Evgeny Kireev, Natalia Orlova, Valentin Strogiy and Kirill Fomin. In the vestibule Andrei Vasnetsov created the mosaic 'Conquerors of Space'. A 38-meter replica of Yuri Gagarin's spacecraft Vostok-1 was also installed on the museum grounds. The museum opened in 1967, and its main exhibition included items donated by Sergei Korolev, as well as accurate replicas of lunar rovers and artificial satellites, and objects that had been in outer space. The museum displays Tsiolkovsky's scientific works, spacesuits, space food, genuine lunar soil, samples of future technology and models of spacecraft.