Star City, Russia

Star City is a common name of an area in Moscow Oblast, Russia, which has since the 1960s been home to the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center . Officially, the area was known as "closed military townlet No. 1" and at various times had also been designated as Shchyolkovo-14 and Zvyozdny .OverviewCosmonauts of the Russian Federal Space Agency, and the Soviet space program before it, have lived and trained in Star City since the 1960s. In the Soviet era the location was a highly secret and guarded military installation, access to which was severely restricted. Many Russian cosmonauts, past and present, and Training Centre's personnel, live in Star City with their families. The facility has its own post office, high school, shops, child day care/kindergarten, movie theater, sports and recreation facilities, railway station, and a museum of space travel and human exploration. Air transportation is available through nearby Chkalovsky Airport - from where also Weightlessness trainings in the Il-76MDK and Zero Gravity flights for the public take place through MiGFlug.In the summer 1992, American "Youth Science Ambassadors" sponsored by People to People International were hosted at Star City where they were treated to a presentation by cosmonaut Anatoly Artsebarsky. In the mid- to late 1990s, groups of select students from high school in Star City participated in the Russian American Cultural Exchange Program (RACE). Students first hosted, then visited, American counterparts attending five high schools in the United States of America.