Buran

Project Summary

In 1978, shortly after the United States had successfully completed the Approach and Landing Tests of the space shuttle Enterprise, the Soviet Union began testing subscale mockups of a reusable spacecraft that looked remarkably like the lifting bodies that NASA used in the early 1970s to test designs for the space shuttle. Through 1984, eight of the Raketoplan spacecraft were tested in Earth orbit. By 1988, the Soviets had completed construction of a full-fledged space shuttle that, again, looked remarkably like the American space shuttle. The space shuttle, called Buran, made one unmanned flight on November 15, 1988, being launched by an Energia rocket and returning to a runway landing in Russia. However, with its deteriorating economy, the Russians could not justify the expense of making the Buran shuttles operational, and the original shuttle and several uncompleted models today sit in storage.

Missions Flown

                                 # of Flt.                          
  Date       Spacecraft Name     Crew Days      Mission/Payload     
-------- ----------------------- ---- ----  ------------------------
03/30/78 Raketoplan (Cosmos 997)   -     -  Orbital test            
03/30/78 Raketoplan (Cosmos 998)   -     -  Orbital test            
05/22/79 Raketoplan (Cosmos 1100)  -     -  Orbital test            
05/22/79 Raketoplan (Cosmos 1101)  -     -  Orbital test            
06/03/82 Raketoplan (Cosmos 1374)  -     -  Orbital test            
05/15/83 Raketoplan (Cosmos 1445)  -     -  Orbital test            
12/27/83 Raketoplan (Cosmos 1517)  -     -  Orbital test            
12/19/84 Raketoplan (Cosmos 1614)  -     -  Orbital test            
11/15/88 Buran Space Shuttle       -     -  Orbital test            

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Last Updated: January 1, 2003