Russia plans to decommission its site No.1, popularly known as Gagarin's Start, where Sputnik has lifted off in October 1957. The site is located in Baikonur, Kazakhstan and it is the launch site of the first human spaceflight mission in April 1961 by Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin.
Many other historic missions were launch in the site including the flight of the first woman to fly on space, Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, in June 1963 and the record-breaking stay aboard the International Space Station by Scott Kelly.
Russian, American Canadian, European, and Japanese astronauts still launch flight in the site. Ars Technica, however, reported that the site will be closed soon. According to the report, the site will be possibly decommissioned sometime after the final flight of the Soyuz FG vehicle in September. Ars Technica said that the crewed launches of the Soyuz MS-13 and Soyuz MS-15 spacecraft, in July and September, respectively, will be the final flights of the Soyuz FG vehicle.
The report said that Site No.1 will be decommissioned due to the lack of funding for needed upgrades for the launch of the Soyuz2 rocket. The historic site was reconfigured for launches of the Soyuz FG rocket. The rocket was introduced in 2001 and it is used today to send crews to the space station.
Ars Technica concluded based on a report by RIA Novosti that cargo launches have already moved to the new Soyuz 2 rocket and it's expected that crew launches will move to the newer rocket, too. The recent Soyuz 2 rocket has a payload capacity of 8.2 tons to low-earth orbit. It has a higher capacity than the 6.9 tons of the Soyuz FG booster.
The Soyuz 2 rockets are currently launched at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Site 31, and in other two launch facilities in Russia and in the Guiana Space Center in French Guiana in Europe. According to reports, the future crew launches of the Soyuz rocket and spacecraft will be launched in the Site 31.
The Baikonur Cosmodrome is located in a desolate place wherein the nearest major city is more than 800 km away. The town of Baikonur in Kazakhstan is hundreds of kilometers to the north. A 20 to 30-minute drive across bad dessert steppe roads is needed to reach the launch pad from the crew quarters that are located outside the cosmodrome perimeter. During the construction of the site, a fake launch pad was made in the original Baikonur while the real one was built in the desert to deceive the Americans.
