Baikonur Cosmodrome, an icon of Russian space exploration neglected in recent times by Moscow, is seeking a future.

The legendary Soviet spaceport, situated on the Kazakh Steppe in southern Kazakhstan, is celebrating its 70th anniversary this year. Run as a Russian exclave by Moscow since the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, Baikonur nowadays has the added difficulty that it is subject to international sanctions against Russia.
 

Baikonur sign on the territory of the cosmodrome (Credit: Emma Collet).

“The first man in space… That was something!” exclaims Azamat Doszhanov, director of KazCosmos, Kazakhstan’s national space agency, as he drives past yet another poster glorifying Yuri Gagarin. The smiling face of the most famous Soviet cosmonaut is omnipresent at Baikonur Cosmodrome, always accompanied by the inscription “Poekhali!” (“Let’s go!” in Russian), Gagarin’s famous phrase, uttered before he embarked on his first journey beyond Earth’s atmosphere on April 12, 1961.

As a symbol of the golden age of space exploration, Baikonur proudly showcases the USSR’s pioneering legacy – from the very first spacecraft launched in 1957, to the first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova, in 1963, and, of course, the sensational journey of Gagarin.

As you drive along the main road cutting across the largest cosmodrome in the world – it covers more than 6,700 square kilometres (2,587 miles) – clusters of infrastructure appear on the horizon, breaking the endless line of the steppe. The Soviets chose the location in 1955, noting it was utterly deserted except for some horses and camels that roam the red sands, and is close to the Equator, offering one of the shortest trajectories to space.

Memories of Soviet space conquest
The facilities, including the launch pads, slowly emerge from the vastness. Each piece of Baikonur is separated by dozens, even hundreds of kilometres, “to prevent the total destruction of the cosmodrome in case of an American bombing at the time,” explains Azamat Saigakov, space engineer and deputy director at Russian-Kazakh joint venture Bayterek.

Indeed, the spaceport was built at the dawn of the Cold War, initially serving as a testing base for the first Soviet intercontinental ballistic missile, the R-7. Baikonur’s location was kept so secret that the Americans only discovered it two years after construction began.

The site weathered the chaos of the Soviet Union’s collapse in the 1990s “relatively smoothly,” recalls Sergei Sopov, founder and first director of Kazakhstan’s National Space Research Agency (1991–1993), who spent most of his career at Baikonur. “After 1991, the cosmodrome remained under military control, reporting to the nuclear and space forces of the Commonwealth of Independent States [CIS]. They were therefore officially separate from the new national entities being formed on the territory of the former Soviet Union.”

Sopov took part in drafting the 1994 agreement between Russia and Kazakhstan, under which Moscow leased the cosmodrome and the closed city of Baikonur — home to 110,000 people at the time — for 20 years, paying Astana $115mn annually. In the 2000s, the cosmodrome was gradually demilitarised and repurposed for commercial missions and crewed flights to the International Space Station (ISS).

The lease has since been extended to 2050, leaving the site under Russian ownership, with Roscosmos and its subsidiaries still operating there. For Russians, Baikonur remains a living monument to the space race, with 43% of Russians still seeing Soviet cosmic achievements as a source of pride, according to the Levada Center.

Yet given the challenge of the Russian Vostochny Cosmodrome, inaugurated in the Russian Far East in 2015, Baikonur’s glory days are now a thing of the past. At the foot of the “Gagarin” launch pad, abandoned equipment speaks of this decline. Since 2019, the pad has been inactive. It was recently converted into a tourist attraction. Several other launch ramps have also been out of service for years, rusting under the scorching Kazakh sun. Of the 10 existing launch complexes, only three remain operational for the “Proton-M” and “Soyuz” programmes.
 

The Gagarin launch pad, from which Yuri Gagarin took off for space, is nowadays a tourist attraction (Credit: Emma Collet).

Russia, a declining commercial space power
“It’s like choosing between an old Soviet Moskvitch car and a new foreign brand,” Doszhanov says of the inactive sites. “The first still runs fine, but you can’t bet on old cars for ever.” In other words, the infrastructure is ageing, and Russia has invested little in modernisation.

After the USSR’s collapse, Russian space investments plummeted amid an economic crisis. Despite a $50bn plan announced by Vladimir Putin in 2013 for Russian space programmes over seven years, the country — once neck-and-neck with the United States in the space race — has fallen far behind.

“Russia is a second-tier space power today,” says Bruce McClintock, head of space research at RAND and former US defence attaché in Moscow. He highlights the impact of corruption within Russian space programmes and the international sanctions imposed since 2022, which have severely hit Russia’s space industry.

“Russian launch vehicles depend heavily on Western electronics, particularly from the US and Europe. Since the war in Ukraine, Russia has lost access to most of these components, grounding many of its satellites,” notes Bart Hendrickx, a veteran analyst of Russian space programmes and professor at Ghent University in Belgium.

Cooperation programmes with Western partners — apart from crewed ISS missions — have also ended. This includes the “Soyuz” launches from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana with the European company Arianespace. Isolated, Russia launched only 1% of the world’s satellites in 2022.

The Kremlin continues to nurture ambitious projects, such as building its own space station by 2030 from launches at the Vostochny Cosmodrome. Moscow is also touting new orbital weapon systems, including the potential deployment of nuclear-capable satellites. These operations are reserved for its military Plesetsk Cosmodrome, located in Arkhangelsk region in northern Russia, and illustrate how civilian space budgets are increasingly redirected toward military work.

Hopes for a revival with “Soyuz-5”
Baikonur, meanwhile, is rarely mentioned in Russia’s grand space plans. In Moscow’s eyes, its only real value now lies in crewed ISS missions launched from its Soyuz pad — the last symbol of cooperation between Russia and the rest of the world.

But the Bayterek joint venture, created in 2004, shows no sign of wrapping up. On site No. 45, home to the imposing “Zenit” launch complex, preparations are under way to host Russia’s new “Soyuz-5” rocket, built in Samara. After years of delays, its first test flight is now scheduled for December.

Under the blazing sun, teams work on the launch pad. Amid gusts of wind and swirling dust devils, technicians adjust the rocket’s “fifth leg,” a cable mast that powers the vehicle before liftoff.
 

Launch pad at the Zenit launch complex, from which the Russian Soyuz-5 rocket will take off. (Credit: Emma Collet).

Modernisation is needed because the pad once launched a different rocket: the “Zenit,” assembled in Ukraine’s Dnipro with Russian components. This cooperation collapsed after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the start of the war in Donbas.

“In terms of modernisation, the main difference is the size of the Soyuz-5 compared to the Zenit,” explains Syrym Intymakov, director of Baiterek’s Baikonur branch. “But the technology is basically the same — we’ve reused as much of the Zenit’s configuration as possible.”

The rocket can carry 17 tonnes to low Earth orbit, but what will its commercial future be? Excluded from European and Western markets due to sanctions, “its customer base will mostly be allied countries in the Middle East and Africa, which don’t have their own space programmes and only need one or two satellites,” assesses Florian Vidal, a researcher at the University of Tromso in Norway and associate fellow at IFRI. “These are small-scale missions that can’t achieve the decades-long profitability Russia once had with European partners.”

Kazakhstan’s space ambitions for Baikonur
The Zenit pad’s €1.5bn modernisation is funded not by Russia, but by Kazakhstan. Since 2018, the Central Asian country has owned the cosmodrome’s eastern facilities, removed from the Russian lease.

This year, the Gagarin launch pad and Buran assembly building — home to decaying prototypes from the 1970s — have also returned to Kazakh jurisdiction.

While these two sites are set to become tourist attractions, other strategic but unused facilities could also pass into Kazakh hands, at a time when Russia’s presence at Baikonur seems increasingly uncertain.
 

A rusting prototype of the planned Soviet "space shuttle", named "Buran". The programme to build it was formally abandoned in 1993 (Credit: Panikovskij, cc-by-sa 4,0).

“Russia might remain for a limited time in Baikonur, at least to keep a foothold in Central Asia,” says Nourlan Asselkan, editor-in-chief of the Kazakh journal Space Research and Technology. “Moreover, moving all its programmes to Vostochny would currently exceed its capacity.” The real decision point will come after 2028, when Roscosmos and Nasa end ISS operations.

In the meantime, Kazakhstan is trying to attract foreign investors and lay the groundwork for becoming an independent space power, eyeing the creation of its own ultra-light launcher. This year, Prime Minister Olzhas Bektenov announced plans for a special economic zone at Baikonur dedicated to “national space projects and foreign startups,” covering some 1,750 square kilometres — about a quarter of the cosmodrome.
 

Entrance into sector of "Bayterek", the Kazakh-Russian joint venture established in 2004 (Credit: Emma Collet).

Talks are already under way with Indian and European companies, but China appears best positioned among the “newcomers” for Kazakhstan’s space sector. During Xi Jinping’s visit to Astana last year, Beijing pledged 100mn yuan (€13mn) for joint space projects. Chinese startups, already active in commercial satellite launches, could become the first foreign operators to use Baikonur’s facilities.

“That would be fully consistent with China’s Belt and Road vision,” says Vidal. “Beijing is a regional power and a close neighbour of Kazakhstan — Baikonur could naturally meet its growing launch needs.” A new space race is taking shape in the Kazakh steppes.