History of Science and Engineering Annotation << Back ASTRONAVIGATION TRAINING OF COSMONAUTS IN THE USSR IN THE 1960s (ON THE MATERIALS OF RGANTD) V.S. Batchenko The text of the article focuses on the organization of cosmonaut training in navigation as a significant stage in the implementation of the Soviet manned lunar program, as well as to illustrate the formation of the material base of the Cosmonaut Training Center during the 1960s. The research is based on the documents of the recently declassifi ed fund 1 «Cosmonaut Training Center Yu.A. Gagarin» of the Russian State Archive of Scientifi c and Technical Documentation (RGANTD). The purpose of the work is to identify theoretical and practical methods of preparing cosmonauts for independent orientation with a possible flight several hundred thousand kilometers from Earth. Objectives of the publication: to show the types of theoretical and practical training and to reveal the problems that the Cosmonaut Training Center faced when organizing training for astronavigation. The astronavigation training of cosmonauts in the «Vostok» and «Voskhod» programs was of an introductory nature, because the flights were carried out in near-Earth orbit, i.e. at a low altitude from the Earth and in automatic mode. Nevertheless, in case of emergency situations, the training program included astronomy training on the territory of the Moscow Planetarium and the formation of constellation orientation skills when flying an airplane. Flights to the Moon meant an increase in the share of manual control of the spacecraft and an increase in the role of the cosmonaut as a pilot, therefore, the theoretical block was strengthened in the Cosmonaut Training Center for «lunar» crews, latitudinal flights on Tu-124 aircraft were introduced and the practice of foreign business trips to Somalia began. But organizational difficulties made adjustments: old globes with a fuzzy image, the absence of their own planetarium, and after that – rooms for it, frequent breakdowns of aircraft and the misuse of their working resource by other military units - this is still an incomplete list of problems that delayed and complicated the training of astronauts. The curtailment of the Soviet lunar program interrupted the initiative to send cosmonauts to the Republic of Somalia, but did not affect the astronavigation training in general. Keywords: space navigation, Cosmonaut Training Center, cosmonautics, astronomical training, lunar program, flight training, planetarium. DOI: 10.25791/intstg.10.2022.1379 Pp. 03-08.