Monument to the Conquerors of Space!
The grand opening of the monument took place on
October 4, 1964, on the day of the 7th anniversary of the Sputnik 1 launch.
Since the 1960s, this part of Moscow in general has had a high concentration of space-
themed sights and names: besides the monument and the museum under it, the grand
"Cosmos" pavilion in the Exhibition Centre displayed many artifacts of the Soviet space
program. Many streets in the area have been named after the precursors of the space
program (Nikolai Kibalchich, Friedrich Zander, Yuri Kondratyuk) and its participants
(Sergey Korolyov).
The monument was designed to accommodate a museum in its base. However, it took
until April 10, 1981 (two days before the 20th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's flight) to
complete the preparatory work and open the Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics.
annaabi.ee 
