Baikonur
The Baikonur spaceport became the world's first proving ground from which an artificial satellite was launched for the first time and a man flew into space.
The very first rocket to be tested at the Baikonur test site was the intercontinental ballistic missile R-7, developed by S.P. Korolev. At the first launch, the missile flew 400 km. The launch was unsuccessful because of the fire in the tail section. The first and also unsuccessful launch of the Atlas ICBM in the United States took place in June 1957. R-7, launched from the 5th NIIP on August 21, 1957, has successfully worked out the active part of the trajectory and delivered to a given area of the head part. Tests have shown that the R-7 missile can put into orbit an artificial Earth satellite. On October 4, 1957, at 22:28:34 Moscow time (October 5, at 00:28:34 Baikonur time), the world's first artificial Earth satellite (ESAT) was launched into orbit from the launch pad No. 1 of the 5th NIIP R-7. The weight of the satellite was 83.6 kg. This is how the countdown of the space age began. The first satellite existed in space for 92 days, made 1400 revolutions around the Earth and went the way of about 60 000 000 km.
The Baikonur Cosmos, Meteor, Ekran, Rainbow, Horizon, Lightning, Glonass Navigation Satellite, Salyut, Mir orbital stations, Quant modules, Mars, Venus, Probe and Vega automatic interplanetary stations were launched from Baikonur. Launching any satellite from the Baikonur Cosmodrome is cheaper than launching any satellite from other cosmodromes of the country. The launch area of the Baikonur Cosmodrome stretches 85 km from north to south and 125 km from west to east. In addition to the launch area, the launch site includes measuring points located at a distance of up to 500 km along the route of the rocket flight in the territory of the Republic of Kazakhstan, as well as 22 fields of fall of spent rocket stages with a total area of 4.8 million hectares of land removed from circulation.