Word: baikonur
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...RUSSIA STRUGGLES TO HOLD TOGETHER, ITS SPACE PROGRAM is falling apart. At the BAIKONUR COSMODROME in Kazakhstan -- the Russian equivalent of the Kennedy Space Center -- civilian workers have been looting equipment, crippling the facility's launch pad in the process. The Russian space program is also involved in a feud with the new Ukrainian state, which has its own space program. A Russian meteorological satellite was turned off in orbit, so Ukraine couldn't recover weather data from it. Some of the stolen Baikonur equipment has mysteriously resurfaced in Ukraine. Understandably, the disarray of Russia's once great space program...
Sergei Krikalev got more than he bargained for when he rocketed into space last May from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, located in what was then still known as the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic. Krikalev was scheduled for a five-month stint as flight engineer aboard the Mir space station; his replacement was slated to arrive in October. Who could have foreseen that Krikalev's country would disintegrate before his mission was over? By the time October rolled around, the Baikonur facility was on the verge of belonging to Kazakhstan , rather than the Soviet Union. As a public relations measure, space-program...