This shuttle was a test model, the cockpit wasn’t working, the dashboard here is fictive and is not the one of Buran. Lower deck reorganised as a showing room. Heat protection of the breaking parachute housing. Graphic of preparation for the flight of Energia-Buran. Documents and photographies of the Baikonur construction, Buran’s heat shield tiles, a piece of the thermal protection of the payload bay and different kind of documents. Kurs antenna for the docking of the shuttle to the MIR space station. Part of the Buran’s VSU (Auxiliary power unit). The payload bay of Buran was layed out in an exhibition room. It delivers a thrust of 190 tf in vacuum. This engine was used for the second stage of the Energia launcher. Outside is the Buran OK-M test shuttle, an RD-0120 engine and antennas.Įngine RD-0120. Second picture: Suborbital capsule for animals.įourth picture: Ejection seat of the Vostok spacecraft.įinally, the last room is dedicated to other country’s rewards. NASA shuttles carried seven or eight astronauts, whereas Buran could accommodate a crew of 10. (SPUTNIK/Alamy) When finally delivered in 1988, the flight article Buran (OK-1K) was eerily similar in appearance to the U.S. Third picture: Docking Soyuz/Progress simulator. Buran hitches a ride on the back of a huge Antonov An-225 Mriya cargo plane. Second picture: Rocket start console (the ignition key is positioned in the middle). The first computers and consoles of the cosmodrome, a Soyuz capsule, spacesuits, … In another room are exhibited more larger pieces. Model of the Gagarin’s launch pad made in 1957. The rest of the visit take place upstairs.Ī room is dedicated to the two main personalities of the Soviet space program: Sergei Korolev and Valentin Glushko. This decision to name the cosmodrome with the same name of another town was to misinform the American spy services. Globe, the Baikonur’s cosmodrome is located at the wrong place (300 km norther). Third picture: An antenna with a radio receiver.Ī lot of Soyuz’s rocket thruster, and a model of the RD-107 engine (engine of the lateral boosters). DZZ system (infrared orientation system).įirst picture: The four main Soviet/Russian launchers, the Soyuz, the Proton, Energia and the lunar rocket the N1. This engine is surrounded by orientation thrusters. The visit begins by the ground floor, once going through the entry hall, and near the cafeteria and the small souvenir shop we arrive in a big room divided in small areas by panels.Īt the rear of the room is a big model of the cosmodrome with a sputnik over it. Numerous rocket engines, Soyuz capsule, the first computers of Baikonur and the Buran test model OK-M. The museum has a lot of impressive pieces. As a whole the 2 shuttles have the same dimensions, mainly because Buran was made to be a counterpart of the STS Shuttle. It’s one of the oldest area (the area 1 is the Gagarin’s launch pad) near the former assembly factories of the Vostok and Soyuz rockets. The original posts can no longer be found online.Īccording to TASS, the graffiti included the inscriptions “Yura, we have arrived” – an apparent reference to Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin – and “Before climbing to the stars, a person needs to learn to live on Earth.This museum is located in the area n☂ of the Baikonur cosmodrome. Images of the apparent graffiti were then posted on Instagram and then shared widely – including by many upset by the incident. The Russian state news agency TASS this week quoted the country’s space agency Roscosmos saying a “group of unidentified persons infiltrated the Baikonur cosmodrome facility” before decorating the side of the Buran craft. It was this that was apparently targeted with graffiti. While one full-scale test model is currently housed in a museum at Baikonur and one was destroyed by a roof collapse, at least one more sits in storage at the disused hangar. As the Soviet Union eventually broke apart, the space program was suspended and eventually canceled.

Only one Buran mission was ever completed, in 1988, a year before the Berlin Wall came down. For years it’s sat abandoned in a dilapidated hangar in Kazakhstan, visited only by intrepid urban explorers keen to photograph a spectacular if unloved piece of space history.īut after graffiti was recently spray painted on the side of a Soviet space shuttle, prompting online outrage, it could soon face a different fate.Īt least one Buran resuable spacecraft – closely modeled on the US Space Shuttle – currently sits in storage at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, a remote active spaceport about 1,500 miles southeast of Moscow.

Buran shuttle locations