The Buran spacecraft

The Buran spacecraft, GRAU index--the “Main Missile and Artillery Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, a department of the Russian (ex-Soviet) Ministry of Defense--”11F35 K1” was a Soviet orbital vehicle analogous in function and design to the US Space Shuttle, a partially reusable launch system and orbital spacecraft operated by the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for human spaceflight missions. It is developed by Chief Designer Gleb Lozino-Lozinskiy, a Russian and Ukrainian engineer, General Director and General Designer of the JSC NPO Molniya, Doctor Science, Hero of Socialist Labour, laureate of Lenin Prize (1962) and State Prizes (!950 1952), and also the lead developer of the Russian Spiral programme; of RSC Energia/RKK Energia, also known as  “OAO S.P. Korolev Rocket and Space Corporation Energia,” a Russian manufacturer of spacecraft and space station components.  

Buran complete unmanned spaceflight in 1988 and remains the only Soviet space shuttle that was launched into space, as the Buran programme, a Soviet and later Russian reusable spacecraft project that began in 1974 at TsAGI, was formally cancelled in 1993. The shuttle Buran was destroyed in 2002 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, also called “Tyuratam,” the world’s first and largest operational space launch facility, when the hangar in which it was stored collapsed.

In addition to the shuttle “Buran,” four other space shuttles were being built in the Buran programme before its cancellation: OK-1K2 “Ptichka” (95-97% complete), an informal nickname for the second space shuttle to be produced as part of the Buran program; “Shuttle 2.01”/OK-2K1 “Baikal” (30-50% complete), the third space shuttle vehicle of the Soviet Buran program, serial number “11F35 K3”; Shuttle 2.02 (10-20% complete), the number of the fourth built Soviet Shuttle Buran reusable space vehicles; Shuttle 2.03 (dismantled), the designation of the fifth Soviet Shuttle Buran reusable space vehicle.

More than a dozen test models, mock-ups or scale models were built, of which the “analogue aero test model” OK-GLI, a test vehicle (“buran aerodynamic analogue”) in the Buran program, flew atmospheric and the 1/8 scale model BOR-5 flight vehicle, used to test the main aerodynamic characteristics, thermal and acoustic loads and stability for the Shuttle Buran program, made suborbital test flights.

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