The Museum of Cosmonautics (Музей Космонавтики) is a museum in Moscow, Russia, dedicated to space exploration. It is located at the base of the Monument to the Conquerors of Space in the northeast of the city. The museum contains a wide variety of space-related works and reproductions that tell the story of space flight and exploration, astronomy, and space technology.The museum’s collection consists of about 85,000 objects.The museum was opened on April 10, 1981 to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the day Yuri Gagarin became the first man to orbit space around the Earth.
Originally, the museum focused almost exclusively on the Soviet space program, particularly people and topics such as Gagarin, Sergey Korolyov, Sputnik, Sojuz Program and Buran Program.
In 2009, the museum was reopened after 3 years of reconstruction work that tripled its original size and added sections devoted to space programs from other parts of the world, such as the U.S., European, Chinese, and ISS space programs.
