Remem­ber one of the most remark­able mas­ter­pieces of Soviet engi­neer­ing? Despite only hav­ing made one flight, it is still con­tinue to fas­ci­nate peo­ple across the globe — and She still intends to con­tinue doing so…

Built in 1980, as part of the Soviet mis­sion of coun­ter­act­ing the US Space Shut­tle pro­gramme, Buran was one of five space­crafts built — and pos­si­bly the only one which ended up see­ing light. Buran (mean­ing snow­storm) was iron­i­cally launched dur­ing a snow­storm in Novem­ber 1988, and it was the only unmanned craft to fly in a fully auto­mated mode (only beaten by a Boe­ing in 2010). Unfor­tu­nately, due to the col­lapse of the USSR, this suc­cess was never repeated — even though it was truly remark­able for a plane of this size and com­plex­ity to launch, maneu­ver, re-enter the atmos­phere and then land safely. Mikhail Gor­bachev was said to dis­like the pro­gramme just enough to bury it.

We men­tioned it here when we wrote about Mriya the superplane.

Sadly, this was the end of it. Buran was stored (or should we say for­got­ten at Baikonur), even though there were talks of reviv­ing it. In 2002 the roof col­lapsed, due to poor main­te­nance, and Buran was left under the sky to rot.

Later it was moved to Tushino, an aero­drome not far from Moscow, with the plans to use it as a museum item. In June this year it finally got some pub­lic­ity it deserved: it has been decided for it to be care­fully repaired and even­tu­ally to be dis­played in a Zhukovsky space museum.

Images cour­tesy of Ilya Varlamov.

Related posts:

1. Mriya The Plane: The Biggest Dream