Museums of Russia: Kaluga Cosmonautics Museum to become the largest in Russia

April 12, 2014, the Day of Cosmonautics, the year of the 80th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin, the first stone of the new building of the K. E. Tsiolkovsky State Museum of the History of Cosmonautics was laid in Kaluga. Construction of a three storey building of glass and metal 20.5 meters high is to be completed by the end of 2016. The new building will house a modern observatory, and on the roof there will be an observation deck with open ramp. According to the project, the new museum will have modern storage facility, designed with the latest requirements and technologies of preserving museum exhibits; advanced interactive spaces, such as 3D-cinema, theater-class, scientific and adventure complex "Cosmic Voyage" with simulated effects of space flight, an observatory, a hall of space simulators.

During the ceremony of laying the first stone of the new building of the museum, a capsule with a message to the descendants was placed in its base signed by cosmonauts Alexander Alexandrov, Alexey Eliseev, Deputy Culture Minister of Russia Grigory Pirumov,museum director Evgeny Kuzin and Kaluga Region Governor Anatoly Artamonov.

The new building of the museum, which received its first visitors in 1967, the year of the 110th birth anniversary of Tsiolkovsky, will open in 2017 on the eve of the 160th anniversary of the scientist.