Buran (spacecraft)

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This article is about the Buran spacecraft; for the space program see Buran program. For other uses of the term, see Buran.
Buran
Russian: Буран
Buran (spacecraft)
Buran landing, with MiG-25 'Foxbat' chase plane
OV Designation 11F35 K1
Country Soviet Union
Named after "Snowstorm" [1]
First flight 1K1
15 November 1988 [1]
Last flight 1K1
15 November 1988 [1]
Number of missions 1 [1]
Crews 0 [1]
Time spent in space  3 hours
Number of orbits 2 [1]
Status Decommissioned, destroyed in hangar collapse

The Buran spacecraft, serial number 11F35 K1, was the only fully completed and operational space shuttle from the Soviet Union's Buran program. It flew in space only once, in 1988, before the program was cancelled in 1993.

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

Contents

[edit] 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 on the cockpit computers. [1]

The shuttle orbited the Earth twice in 206 minutes of flight[2]. 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. [2]

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. In the United States, this procedure was used with Space Shuttle Enterprise to test the flight characteristics of the Space Shuttle on approach and landing, so that by the time mission STS-1 drew to a close, the handling characteristics of Space Shuttle Columbia would be known. 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. [3]

[edit] Projected flights

Buran before liftoff.
Buran before liftoff.

As of 1989, it was projected that Buran would have an unmanned second flight in 1993, with a duration of 15-20 days. [4] Due to the cancellation of the project, this never took place.

[edit] Destruction

On May 12, 2002, a hangar housing a Buran 1.01 orbiter (possibly 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.[1]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g Buran. NASA (12 November 1997). Retrieved on August 15, 2006.
  2. ^ a b Chertok, Boris (2005). in Asif A. Siddiqi: Raketi i lyudi (trans. "Rockets and People") (PDF), NASA History Series, 179. Retrieved on July 3, 2006. 
  3. ^ Video: Soviet Shuttle Buran Launch. vunet.ru. Retrieved on September 13, 2006.
  4. ^ Экипажи "Бурана" Несбывшиеся планы.. buran.ru. Retrieved on August 5, 2006. (Russian)

[edit] External links

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