Here’s What You Need to Know: The Buran program was judged a success and would likely have continued had the Cold War carried on. Unfortunately, it suffered from poor timing: the Soviet Union had ...

A structural test article of the Soviet Buran space shuttle, on display in Moscow in 2017. WHEN VICTOR ZABOLOTSKY, A TEST PILOT WHO ONCE TRAINED TO FLY the Soviet Buran space shuttle, thinks back on ...

Why was the Soviet shuttle's triumphant launch its first and last? And is there any hope that a Russian shuttle might at some point head for the stars? The Buran’s flight, which lasted 205 minutes, ...

Here’s What You Need to Know: The Buran program, which once involved the hard work of so many talented individuals and so much of the USSR’s treasure, is now a footnote in space history. The intense ...

an Energia heavy-lift booster. The unmanned mission was the first and, as it turned out, only flight of Buran, the Soviet Union’s answer to the U.S. space shuttle. 1.5 meters from the center of the ...

On November 15, 1988, the first and only launch of Buran space shuttle took place. Buran was lifted into space, on an unmanned mission, by the specially designed Energia rocket. Buran was designed to ...