It was founded in Moscow by Russian aviation pioneer Nikolai Yegorovich Zhukovsky on December 1, 1918.

From 1925 and up to the 1930s, TsAGI developed and hosted Tupolev's AGOS (Aviatziya, Gidroaviatziya i Opytnoye Stroitelstvo, the "Aviation, Hydroaviation, and Experimental Construction"), the first aircraft design bureau in Soviet Union, and at the time the main one.

[1] In 1930, two other major aircraft design bureaus in the country were the Ilyushin's TsKB (Tsentralnoye Konstruksionnoye Byuro means "Central Design Bureau") and an independent, short-lived Kalinin's team in Kharkiv.

In 1965 in Zhukovsky a Department of Aeromechanics and Flight Engineering of MIPT was established with support of TsAGI's research and knowledge base to educate specialists for aerospace industry.

Among TsAGI's developments are the participation in the rocket Energia and the Space Shuttle Buran projects.