Cosmonaut training furnace hidden in Russia's birch forest

An hour's drive from Moscow, tucked away in a birch forest with no signposts, is the Star City cosmonaut training center.

Tim Peake is in the final stages of training. Photo: BBC

According to the BBC, the center consists of many gray concrete buildings, with an incredible history. Star City was founded in 1961, a time that marked the great success of the Soviet Union when Yuri Gararin became the first person to fly into orbit. Star City also trained other famous cosmonauts such as Valentina Tereshkova - the first woman to fly in space, Alexei Leonov - the first person to live on the Russian space station Mir.

The center is decorated with an antique fighter plane rather than a modern rocket. The hallways are lined with pictures of generations of astronauts who have studied here.

Star City has been a training ground for astronauts for many years, with at least two Americans and British astronaut Tim Peake currently completing their training.

The vast hall of the training complex houses simulators that simulate the Soyuz capsule launch system. Tim Peak and his two colleagues, Yuri Malenchenko and Tim Kopra, used these devices in their final training session before flying into space next month.

Star City has equipment that simulates separate compartments on the ISS in real size. Photo: BBC

In the control room, serious faces are creating a test with more than 10 different emergencies that could happen in space within three hours.

Malenchenko never failed a test and landed successfully every time despite numerous malfunctions and alarms. Malenchenko was also the first person in the world to get married remotely in space in 2003 when his wife was in Texas and he was in orbit around New Zealand.

The next large room houses a replica of the Russian capsule on the International Space Station (ISS). Since NASA disbanded the space shuttle program in 2011, any manned space flight has required the Russian Soyuz rocket.

Even before the end of the shuttle era, American astronauts were sent to Star City for training. But the real motivation was to find a way to share the spaceflight effort. So the Americans flew on Soyuz, the Russians on shuttles, and both worked together to build the ISS, a monument to post-Cold War cooperation.

In space travel over the years, with its increasingly secure safety record and trips that have been in the works for decades, Russia has been present on every trip. One fact is clear and undeniable: Russia currently possesses the only means of sending humans into orbit - the Soyuz rocket.

According to VnExpress