Other national and international facilities

Abstract

From 1960 until the early 1990s, all the training of Soviet and Russian cosmonauts had taken place at TsPK, or at other Russian and east European facilities, such as contractors, design bureaus and academic institutions. Apart from a few short training trips to the United States for the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, there was no formal foreign cosmonaut training programme until the creation of Shuttle-Mir. Due to the nature of that programme, the cosmonauts would have to become acquainted with the American Space Shuttle, its systems, facilities and launch and landing systems, with training sessions held at JSC in Houston and KSC in Florida. In addition, as a precursor to ISS, training on partner components in Europe, Canada and Japan has seen an expansion of cosmonaut space flight training around the world, expanding the scope of experience and cooperation like never before. A brief summary of each of these ‘foreign’ training facilities is detailed here.