Space Museum2

The Space Museum was ceremoniously opened on June 27, 2001 in Garni, on the territory of the Institute of Space Astronomy. In the Garni center, under the leadership of Grigor Gurzadyan, the ORION space observatories were created, where about 40 cosmonauts underwent their pre-flight training. This activity, however, under the conditions of secrecy of the Soviet era, remained largely unknown to the general public.

The museum’s exposition includes unique exhibits from the early era of space exploration created in Armenia. Here you can see the original space capsule (1962), which returned from outer space, with its skin burnt upon entering the Earth’s atmosphere, and some other exhibits that have also been in space.Among the exhibits is a duplicate of the ORION-1 space observatory, installed on the first space station SALUT-1 (1971). Cosmonaut Viktor Patsayev, who conducted observations with the help of ORION-1, is considered “the first astronomer in the world to work outside the Earth’s atmosphere.”

A duplicate of the ORION-2 space observatory, launched on the Soyuz-13 spacecraft (1973), is on display. Its parameters surpassed similar devices of its time; the scientific results were published in Nature and other world journals. The specimen presented in the museum was exhibited at EXPO-2000 in Hannover.

The museum displays various historical documents of space flights, handwritten materials of cosmonauts, scientists, designers of the VOSTOK and SOYUZ spacecraft, astronauts and designers of American spacecraft. Among the significant documents is the manuscript of an article by Nobel laureate Hans Bethe, one of the key figures in the creation of the first nuclear bombs; the article was co-authored with Grigor Gurzadyan.