The Soviet Union spent much money on outer space exploration building research laboratories which today turn out to be needless. This is a laboratory of metallography (metallography is the study of the physical structure and components of metals). Let’s go see what’s inside!

It was a secret laboratory with doors equipped with access codes, that even some of its workers could not go wherever they wanted. It has been like this before, now it’s different.

So, we’re in the control room.

Some part of the equipment has been removed. Probably, for other purposes.

A remote control device.

A control panel. Although the laboratory has been abandoned for some time, if you got caught here, you’d wish it had never happened.

In Soviet times, they conducted a lot of researches and tests here for cosmos exploration but in the 90s the country could not allow it anymore, so the work was suspended… for ever, as it turned out later.

Probably, this device was used for testing space equipment in a vacuum at different temperatures.

Some shots from the inside.

The testing device from another angle.

‘STL-300’. Does anybody know what it is and what it’s for?

A poster picturing the device.

Gel leak testers. They have a weight of 170 kg and were produced in the 70s.

Little by little, local people disassemble the equipment…

On the one hand, the lab is outdated; on the other hand, is there a lab in Russia where they carry out similar tests and investigations right now?

An older version of the leak tester.

On the second floor there are workplaces of employees and a substation.

A set of stylish component parts.

Devices which haven’t been unwrapped.

Ionizing vacuumeters.

The view of the main floor.

This is a department of chemical inquiries.

Many of the flasks have been broken so there is a very strong smell here.

A heat exchanger.

A dryer machine to evaporate unnecessary water from the flasks.

No laboratory could do without scales.

The extractor fan is in panic! Which is understandable because it was supposed to draw in the toxic air which used to be in abundance here.

New flasks.

One of the storage rooms.

Naturally, all the measurement devices were made in the USSR, except for the Dendy joystick.