Places · Spaceport
Plesetsk Cosmodrome
The northernmost orbital launch site in the world, and for years the busiest — a fact the Soviet Union did not acknowledge until 1983.
- Where
- Arkhangelsk Oblast, Russia
- Coordinates
- 62.93°N 40.58°E
- Since
- 1966
- On the map
- Show me
- More
- roscosmos.ru
The sky from here
The sky over this spot is zone 3 — rural transition, Bortle 3–4, with a naked-eye limit around magnitude 6.2–7.0. The Milky Way is clearly there but loses its detail near the horizon. Light domes are obvious in several directions.
Against that sky 106 of the 110 Messier objects are straightforward in 10×50 binoculars and 106 in a 130mm, with 38 reachable by eye alone. The nearest sky of Bortle 2 or better lies about 7 km north-east of here.
Between 15 April and 28 August the Sun never gets eighteen degrees below the horizon from this latitude, so there is no astronomical darkness at all for those 136 nights. Nothing faint is observable in that window, however far you drive from the nearest town.
The centre of the galaxy never rises here at all, which removes the brightest part of the Milky Way from the sky permanently. Of the 110 Messier objects, 30 never set from here and 8 never rise.
The sky here is kindest to Owl Nebula, Pinwheel Galaxy and Little Dumbbell, each of which passes within a few degrees of overhead — an object at the zenith is being seen through the least air it will ever be seen through, and the difference against the same object low in the south is not subtle.
Bode's Galaxy, Cigar Galaxy and Spindle Galaxy never set from this latitude, so they are available on any clear night of the year rather than for one season of it.
Against that, Southern Pinwheel, Butterfly Cluster and Ptolemy's Cluster never clear the horizon here at all. No amount of aperture or patience changes that; the only remedy is to travel.
Read at 62.93°N 40.58°E. Darkness is estimated rather than measured; everything else follows from the latitude and holds along the whole parallel. How accurate this is.
Nearby
Questions
What part of the sky never rises at Plesetsk Cosmodrome?
Everything south of declination −27°. From 62.9°N that is a cap 63° in radius centred on the south celestial pole, which is 27% of the whole celestial sphere. It is out of reach permanently rather than seasonally: no time of year and no instrument brings it above the horizon. The matching 27% around the north celestial pole is the same geometry inverted, and never sets.
How many hours of true darkness does Plesetsk Cosmodrome get?
It runs the full range: about 12 hours 50 minutes at best, near 21 December, and flatly zero at the other end of the year around 15 April, when the Sun stays too shallow all night for the sky to finish getting dark. Astronomical darkness is the Sun more than eighteen degrees below the horizon, which is a stricter thing than the Sun being down.
What orbits can be reached from Plesetsk Cosmodrome?
Anything inclined at 62.9° or more, for free. A rocket launched due east from 62.9°N arrives in an orbit inclined at 62.9° — the shallowest the site can reach without spending propellant to turn the plane — and steeper orbits are simply a matter of launching on a different heading. That is already steeper than the Space Station's own 51.6°, so even reaching the Station from here means a dogleg rather than the straightforward case it is closer to the equator. Shallower is where it gets expensive. Every one of the 62.9° between here and the 0° of a geostationary belt is paid for in a plane change, which is why equatorial pads are worth building even in inconvenient places.
How far is Plesetsk Cosmodrome from the other sites on this map?
The nearest is Esrange Space Center, about 1,050 km to the north-west. That is also the nearest other spaceport, with the next one 1,300 km beyond it. Distances are great-circle, so they are what a signal covers rather than what a road does.