Nyonoksa, also Nenoksa, ( ) is a rural locality (a selo) under the administrative jurisdiction of Severodvinsk Town of Oblast Significance, Arkhangelsk Oblast, Russia. It is located at the coast of the Dvina Bay of the White Sea (the Summer Coast) northwest of the city of Severodvinsk. The Nyonoksa railway station is from Nyonoksa at the mostly military village of Sopka along the Northern Railway line from Severodvinsk. Nyonoksa is accessible by land vehicles only during the winter months when the nearby swampland freezes.
Missile testing site
Established in 1954 near Nyonoksa is "The State Central Navy Testing Range" () which is the main rocket launching site of the Soviet Navy and later the Russian Navy and is also called Nyonoksa<!-- at -->. The naval missile range is also known as military unit 09703. Since 1965 numerous rockets of the types R-27, R-29, R-39 Rif and R-39M were launched from Nyonoksa. These rockets were prototypes for the employment on missile submarines. The launching site is located in the mostly military settlement of Sopka (), which has a railroad station, hosts the military unit 09703, has a population similar to Nyonoksa of about 500, and is north of the selo of Nyonoksa.
On 15 December 2015 at 11am, an accident during a missile launch test resulted in a block of flats in the mostly military village of Sopka, which is part of Nyonoksa, being hit by part of a rocket. A fire broke out, but all residents were evacuated in time.
2019 explosion
On 8 August 2019 an explosion occurred at or near the test site killing five and injuring six (or three) people. The explosion was followed by a brief spike in radiation levels.
Culture and recreation
Nyonoksa hosts 7 objects which are protected as cultural heritage monuments at the federal level. They are grouped in two ensembles. The Nyonokotsky Pogost is one of the few surviving triple wooden church ensembles, consisting of two churches (a bigger, unheated, church used in the summer, a smaller, heated church used in the winter) and a bell-tower. The Nyonoksa churches are the St. Nicholas Church (1763) and the Trinity Church (1727).
In 1553, an English ship the Edward Bonaventure in the Hugh Willoughby expedition and captained by Richard Chancellor and Clement Adams arrived during England's search for the Northern Sea Route to China and India and thus opened Russia under Czar Ivan IV to English merchants. The ship's captain and crew were taken to Czar Ivan IV while the ship was repaired. This began the formal diplomatic relations between England and Russia.