The Graveyard of Arrows: Inside the Former Soviet Union's Baikonour Cosmodrome

The former Soviet Union's Baikonour Cosmodrome has served as the backdrop for many firsts in the history of space exploration. Originally built as an ICBM test range in 1955, Baikonour witnessed the launch of the first artificial satellite (Sputnik I), the first human in space (Yuri Gagarin) and the first missions to the Moon, Venus and Mars. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation has leased the cosmodrome from the government of Kazakhstan and still maintains it as their primary space launch facility. In 2007, Jonathon Hill traveled to Baikonour to collect data for his master's thesis, which examines the effects of near-pad rocket failures on launch pad infrastructure. Hill will discuss the history of Baikonour, his experiences while touring the cosmodrome, and the role his Russian language training at ASU had in making his thesis project possible.

Mr. Hill earned his B.S. in Aerospace Engineering and B.A. in Russian from Arizona State University in 2005 and will defend his master's thesis in Aerospace Engineering at ASU in the fall of 2009. In 2005, he participated in the Arizona Russian Abroad program in St. Petersburg, Novgorod, and Moscow. In addition to Russian, Hill studied elementary Kazan Tatar in the ASU Melikian Center’s Critical Languages Institute (CLI). He is currently working as a mission planner at the ASU Mars Space Flight Facility where he operates ASU's THEMIS camera aboard the Mars Odyssey orbiter and ASU's Miniature Thermal Emission Spectrometers aboard the Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity.

This lecture is co-sponsored by the School of Mechanical, Aerospace, Chemical and Materials Engineering; the School of Earth and Space Exploration; the School of International Letters and Cultures; and the Melikian Center: Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies.