Svobodniy Credit - © Mark Wade

Headquarters of an RVSN Division, 1961-1994, equipped with 90 light ICBM (UR-100) silos. The number of operational silos declined to 60 by 1993. The break-up of the Soviet Union left the main Russian cosmodrome on foreign territory (Baikonur, in Kazakhstan). The Northern Cosmodrome at Plesetsk did not have facilities for large launch vehicles and was not suited for support of launches into lower-inclination orbits. Therefore Svobodniy Cosmodrome, located 7,777 km east of Moscow, was established as the Second State Space Trials Launch Centre (GIK-2) on 2 February 1996. A decommissioned UR-100N (SS-19) ICBM base formed the starting point. A crash program built a living area for 6,000 staff, a paved road network, communications, electrical, and water systems. The airport Ukrainka, 70 km away, was upgraded to Category 1 so that it could accommodate the largest transport aircraft. The objective was to have the infrastructure within 2 to 3 years to start launches of the Rokot and Start light launch vehicles.

It was planned to also accommodate the new all-Russian modular Angara launch vehicles in the medium and heavy categories. This massive expansion, to be financed jointly by the Ministry of Defense and Russian Space Agency, would cost 4 trillion 1994 rubles. It would add new launch pads, a propellant farm, training centre, communications centre, tracking station, airport, and hospital south-east of the existing Rokot facility. It was to have been completed within eight years, eventually housing 30,000 technical staff and a total population of 100,000.

Such funding was not available. By 2000 conversion of unfinished Zenit pads at Plesetsk for use with Angara was underway. It would seem that Svobodniy would be limited to Rokot, Strela and Start-1 launches, while Plesetsk would be developed as the main Russian cosmodrome. Geosynchronous launches from Plesetsk, it was found, could be made economically by using the moon's gravity to change the orbital plane of the satellite. Svobodniy would still be needed to reach the 51.6 degree orbit of the International Space Station, however.

By 2008 plans for further development Svobodniy were scrapped in favor of a new eastern cosmodrome. Svobodniy had been used for five launches between 1997 and 2006.

• LC5 - Latitude: 51.8344 deg. Longitude: 128.2757 deg. Used by: Topol. First Launch: 1997-03-04. Last Launch: 2006-04-25. Number Launches: 5.