On Cosmonautics Day, April 12, a lecture “Kazakhstan is a space harbor” was held for students of the capital’s lyceum schools at the Elbasy Library. Schoolchildren learned about the history of space exploration in general, as well as about the formation and development of the space industry in Kazakhstan, the activities of the Baikonur complex and Kazakhstan’s cosmonauts, Delovoy Kazakhstan reports.
“October 4, 1957, the first artificial Earth satellite was launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome, and on April 12, 1961, the first manned flight into space was made from there. Thus, Kazakhstan land became the first space harbor, which gave rise to the space age of mankind”, - said lecturer Dametken Kushunova.
The first Kazakh cosmonaut Toktar Aubakirov made a space flight on October 2, 1991 as a cosmonaut-researcher of the “Soyuz TM-13” spacecraft. For a week he worked aboard the “Mir” orbital complex, implementing the first national space program of Kazakhstan.
The first cosmonaut of independent Kazakhstan was Talgat Musabayev, who traveled into space three times, twice as a commander. He holds one of the world records for being in outer space - 41 hours 18 minutes in 7 exits. The total duration of its flights - 341 days 9 hours 48 minutes and 41 seconds - is among the top ten in the world. T. Musabayev performed 8 space experiments with the participation of more than 10 institutes under the Russian-American program "Mir-NASA" and the Kazakh program "Flight-M".
The third Kazakh cosmonaut was Aidyn Aimbetov, the 545th cosmonaut in the world. In 2015, he made a space flight as a flight engineer of the “Soyuz TMA-18M” transport manned spacecraft to the International Space Station. A. Aimbetov completed the fifth scientific program of Kazakhstan, which consisted of 10 projects in 4 areas.
At the end of the lecture, the children got acquainted with the information about the activities of space enterprises in our country.
