Museum of Cosmonautics, Space museum in Zhytomyr, Ukraine

The National Museum of Cosmonautics named after Sergei Pavlovich Korolev consists of a memorial house-museum where Korolev spent his childhood and a separate "Space" exhibition building opened on 1 June 1991. Indoors are full-size descent modules of Soyuz-27 and Venera-15, a Lunokhod-2 model and a Soyuz spacecraft mock-up; outside stand an R-5 geodetic rocket and an R-12 missile.

The museum opened in 1970 as a memorial tied to Sergei Korolev, the rocket engineer born in Zhytomyr who became central to the Soviet space effort. It later grew into a standalone institution and moved to a larger building that allowed the collection to expand.

The museum bears the name of Sergei Korolev, born in Zhytomyr in 1907; his mother Maria Balanina, daughter Natalia and wife Nina donated many personal documents and belongings. The memorial house displays furniture and family papers from his childhood, while the Cosmos exhibition includes a Bible placed in a pool of water at its centre as a symbol of wisdom.

The museum is located in central Zhytomyr and is easy to reach on foot from the main square. Plan extra time for the outdoor section, as the large objects there take a while to take in properly.

Beside the "Cosmos" exhibition hall stand two rockets: a geodetic variant of the R-5 (8A62), the first Soviet carrier of a nuclear charge and the last upgrade of the German A4/V-2, and an R-12 (8K63), the first missile developed in Dnipro, with an engine running on high-boiling components.