Gateways to space

On Thursday, Russia launched a Soyuz rocket from its new Vostochny spaceport, located deep in Siberia.

Russia had long been considering the construction a new spaceport. Those plans were passed in 2007, with construction starting in 2012. This is what the building site looked like last August.

This is Vostochny's launch pad. At the moment, only Soyuz rockets can launch from here. This will change in 2023, when manned Angara rockets will be cleared for takeoff.

For the past six decades, Russia launched most of its rockets from Baikonur in Kazakhstan. Since the fall of the Iron Curtain, Russia has been paying an annual fee of $117 million (104 million euros) for the use of Baikonur.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has its own spaceport in Kourou in French Guiana, a region on the northeast coast of South America that belongs to the European Union. Kourou is very close to the equator.

The US Air Force launches its rockets from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Closeby is the Kennedy Space Center, NASA's spaceport.

The Japanese space agency (JAXA) has a spaceport with a rather picturesque location, secluded on the island of Tanegashima.

Founded in 1958, Jiuquan is China's oldest and biggest spaceport. It is located near the city of Jiuquan in Gansu Province in Inner Mongolia. China has three spaceports in total.

And this is what the big halls at spaceports look like from inside. This is the Chinese spaceport Jiuquan. We see here a spacecraft being loaded onto a rocket.