/sci/ - Science & Math

After six decades, ‘Gagarin’s Start’ will meet its end as a launch pad, China launches new Yunhai remote sensing satellite
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https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/10/lacking-funds-russia-will-turn-gagarins-start-launch-pad-into-a-museum/
> Because it lacks the funding to modernize its most historic launch pad, Russia now instead plans to turn "Gagarin's Start" into a museum.
> The pad is known as Gagarin's Start because it hosted the world's first human spaceflight in 1961, when the Vostok 1 mission carrying Yuri Gagarin blasted into orbit. Between 1961 and 2019, this workhorse pad accommodated a remarkable 520 launches, more than any other site in the world.
> Most recently, during the last two decades, the Soyuz-FG rocket launched cargo and crew missions from Gagarin's Start, which is located on the Kazakhstan steppe near the small city of Baikonur. The final launch from the site took place in September 2019, with the Soyuz MS-15 mission carrying Russian cosmonaut Oleg Skripochka, NASA astronaut Jessica Meir, and United Arab Emirates astronaut Hazza Al Mansouri to the International Space Station.
> In November 2021 the UAE announced it had reached a "trilateral agreement" with Russia and Kazakhstan to modernize Gagarin's Start to promote peaceful space exploration.
> However this agreement was never acted upon, probably because Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine only a few months later.
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https://spacenews.com/china-launches-new-yunhai-remote-sensing-satellite/
> HELSINKI — China added to its series of Yunhai remote sensing satellites late Saturday with a launch from the Gobi Desert.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxyM0IlYrWg