Third-year students of the Faculty of Geography, SSU (who are taking the course in territorial planning), had a field lesson within the course in regional planning. It was organised by Associate Professor Svetlana Ustavshchikova. On April 14, they visited Yuri Gagarin Space Conquerors Park established at the landing of the first cosmonaut near Engels.
During the field lesson, the juniors studied the landscape planning of the new park, visited the information centre and the rare LAZ-695B bus – the highlight of the exposition. Such a bus took astronauts to the first 12 launches (there was no 13th one, the astronauts are superstitious people). It symbolically brought the students to the landing site. Meteorites act as a navigation system in the park. The shungite blocks bear detailed information about each zone. The park also has original lighting poles with loudspeakers that broadcast songs about space.
The students thoroughly read the information on the demonstration walls. One of them is with bas-relieves of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Sergei Korolev, and the first cosmonauts. Another wall summarizes the history of space exploration and provides information about the planets of the solar system.
In the Park you can walk along the 108 minutes route, which is a circular promenade, along which are placed granite slabs with phrases from Yuri Gagarin's negotiations with the Earth. The route leads to the stele and the monument, there are benches for rest, cedars are planted. The Kedr (cedar) was Yuri Gagarin’s call sign.
