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Details may change as the countdown and ascent progress. Launch details A Soyuz-FG will launch Soyuz TMA-12, a crewed Soyuz mission to the ISS&_160;for RKA. Launch will occur from&_160;LC-1/5 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome. The mission's crew consists of Expedition 17 cosmonauts Sergey Volkov and Oleg Kononenko, and the first South Korean in space, Yi So-yeon.
The Baikonur Cosmodrome (Kazakh ???????? ????? ??????, Bayqoñir garis aylagi; Russian ????????? ????????, Kosmodrom Baikonur), also called Tjuratam, is the world's oldest and largest operational space launch facility. It is located in the desert steppes of Kazakhstan, about 200&_160;kilometers (124&_160;mi) east of the Aral Sea, north of the Syr Darya river, near of Tjuratam railway station. The facility derives its name from a wider area known as Baikonur and is also traditionally linked with town of Dzhezkazgan. It is leased by the Kazakh government to Russia (currently till 2050) and is managed by the Russian Federal Space Agency. The shape of the area leased is an ellipse, measuring 90 kilometres east to west, by 85 kilometres north to south, with the cosmodrome at the centre. It was originally built by the Soviet Union from the late 1950s as the base of operations for its ambitious space program, but fell in decline[1] in the years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991. One of the launch pads, known as Gagarin's Start, is located at 45°55'13?N, 63°20'32?E and is the launch pad from which Vostok 1 was launched. It is sometimes assumed that the name "Baikonur" was chosen to intentionally mislead the West as to the actual location of the site by suggesting that it was near Baikonur, a mining town about 320&_160;kilometers (199&_160;mi) northeast of the launch centre in the desert area near Dzhezkazgan. But "Baikonur" also refers to the entire region. [2] Town of Baikonur got it's current name only in December 1995, 40 years after operations on site began. Baikonur was founded on June 2, 1955. It was originally built as a long-range-missile center and later expanded to include launch facilities for space flight. Sergei Korolev, the Chief Designer of the Soviet R-7 Semyorka ICBM, selected the site, as the radio control system of the rocket required a ground station several hundred kilometers down range of the launch pads. The expense of constructing the launch facilities and the several hundred kilometers of new road and train lines made the Cosmodrome one of the most costly infrastructure projects the Soviets undertook. A supporting town was built around the facility to provide housing, schools and support infrastructure for workers. It was raised to city status in 1966 and named Leninsk.
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