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Buran (spacecraft)

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This article is about the Buran spacecraft; for the Soviet space shuttle program see Buran program. For other uses of the term, see Buran.
Buran
Template:Lang-ru
Buran on Launch Pad
CountrySoviet Union
Named after"Snowstorm"[1]
StatusDecommissioned, destroyed in hangar collapse
First flight1K1
15 November 1988[1]
Last flight1K1
15 November 1988[1]
No. of missions1[1]
Crew members0[1]
Days spent in space3 hours
No. of orbits2[1]
Buran on the back of an Antonov An-225 at Le Bourget, outside of Paris
File:Buran On Antonov225.jpg
Buran being carried by the An-225.

The Buran spacecraft (Russian Буран, "Snowstorm" or "Blizzard"), serial number 11F35 K1, was the only fully completed and operational space shuttle vehicle from the Soviet Buran program. It had completed only one (unmanned) spaceflight in 1988 before the shuttle program was cancelled in 1993. It was destroyed by a hangar collapse in 2002.

Like its American counterpart, the Buran, when in transit from its landing sites back to the launch complex, was transported on the back of a large jet airplane. It was piggy-backed on the Antonov An-225 Mriya aircraft, which was designed for this task and remains the largest powered aircraft in the world.

Several shuttles were produced, one of those, the OK-GLI was modified to fly with jet engines for aerodynamic testing. One painted mock shuttle (the former static test-article OK-TVA) is now a ride simulating space flight in Gorky Park, Moscow. The OK-GLI was sold by it's owner NPO Energia, shipped to Sydney in Australia and subsequently displayed at the Sydney Olympics in 2000. Shortly after, the new owner went bankrupt and the OK-GLI shuttle then went to Bahrain for a number of years while legal ownership status was in dispute. The Sydney/Bahrain (OK-GLI) shuttle was acquired by the German Sinsheim Auto & Technik Museum in 2004[2], and is currently in transit, to the museum, where it will become the world's first genuine space shuttle to be exhibited to the general public.

OK-GLI was loaded onto a ship on the 4th March, 2008. During the transfer from the storage barge to the ship there was a failure of the aft spreader and the tail of the shuttle dropped from deck height into the hold. Fortunately, no-one was hurt and both the ship and shuttle seemed to suffer only minor damage. The shuttle was then transported to the Dutch port of Rotterdam. There it was transferred to a barge for further transport to Germany by means of river transit. During the second week of April 2008, the orbiter was transported by barge along the river Rhine to the museum in Speyer, near Frankfurt-am-Main.

First flight

The first and only orbital launch of the (unmanned) shuttle Buran 1.01 was at 3:00 UTC on 15 November 1988. It was lifted into orbit by the specially designed Energia booster rocket. The life support system was not installed and no software was installed to run the computer display screens.[1]

The shuttle orbited the Earth twice in 206 minutes of flight[3]. On its return, it performed an automated landing on the shuttle runway at Baikonur Cosmodrome, where despite a lateral wind speed of 17 metres/second it made a successful landing only 3 metres laterally and 10 metres longitudinally from the target.[3]

Video

Part of the launch was televised, but the actual liftoff was not shown. This led to some speculation that the mission may have been fabricated, and that the subsequent landing may not have been from orbit but from a shuttle-carrying aircraft, as with the Space Shuttle Enterprise. Since then, the launch video has been released to the public, confirming that the shuttle did indeed lift off, with the poor weather conditions described by the Soviet media at the time easily seen.[4]

Projected flights

As of 1989, it was projected that Buran would have an unmanned second flight in 1993, with a duration of 15–20 days.[5] Due to the cancellation of the project, this never took place.

Destruction

On May 12, 2002, a hangar housing a Buran 1.01 orbiter (the actual Buran that flew in 1988) collapsed due to incomplete maintenance. The collapse killed eight workers and destroyed the orbiter as well as a mockup of an Energia booster rocket.[6]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g "Buran". NASA. 12 November 1997. Retrieved 2006-08-15. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  2. ^ http://www.technik-museum.de/buran/
  3. ^ a b Chertok, Boris (2005). Asif A. Siddiqi (ed.). Raketi i lyudi (trans. "Rockets and People") (PDF). NASA History Series. p. 179. Retrieved 2006-07-03.
  4. ^ "Video: Soviet Shuttle Buran Launch". vunet.ru. Retrieved 2006-09-13.
  5. ^ "Экипажи "Бурана" Несбывшиеся планы". buran.ru. Retrieved 2006-08-05. Template:Ru icon
  6. ^ Whitehouse, David (2002-05-13). "Russia's space dreams abandoned". bbc.co.uk. BBC. Retrieved 2007-11-14. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

Further reading

  • Energiya-Buran: The Soviet Space Shuttle, Bart Hendrick and Bert Vis, Springer-Praxis, 2007, pp526, ISBN: 978-0-387-69848-9.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Space Shuttle Buran.
  • Manufacturer's site about Buran space shuttle, buran.ru.
  • Manufacturer - NPO MOLNIYA Research and Industrial Corporation.
  • Buran historical photos at NPO MOLNIYA (buran.ru) with comments in Russian.
  • Buran video archive at NPO MOLNIYA with comments in Russian.
  • Enthusiast site about Buran space shuttle
  • Buran's first flight, lift-off video
  • Buran photo report at Pravda.ru
  • Technical Drawing of the Buran
  • Historical photos at englishrussia.com
  • Video: Buran piggyback on AN-225 Test Flight
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