It may seem odd but Baikonur is located about 300 km from where it should be found. Baikonur is the site of the Russian Cosmodrome where the astronaut Yuri Gagarin, the dog Laika, the first woman and the first monkey were launched into space. In 1952 the Soviets stationed the Cosmodrome in the middle of the vast Mongolian steppe; the name Baikonur was given as a way to mislead the foreign superpowers as to the Cosmodrome’s actual location, suggesting that it might be found near to Baikonur, a mining town approximately 320 km to the north-east of the space station. In 1991, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Baikonur came under Kazakh territory. In 2006, Vladimir Putin renewed a contract with Nursultan Nazarbayev, the President of Kazakhstan, to lease the Cosmodrome and the city of Baikonur for another fifty years. The laws, language, passports and courts in both the city and Cosmodrome are Russian. Until 2056, Baikonur will probably be the only city on the planet to be under lease and the only city located approximately 300 km from where it should be found.