12/14/2023 0 Comments Russian space shuttle“We have been dreaming of this time,” says Gurushkin. In fact only the core unit is lost.”Įnergia thinks there is now a role for Buran because the International Space Station is creating the need to carry ever larger loads into low orbit. “The launcher is powered by hydrogen, oxygen and kerosene,” says Gurushkin. The process takes only a few days.Īll the necessary machinery is still in place at Baikonur, and the hangars are stacked with spare rocket motor parts and fuel tanks. Like all Russian space vehicles, and the nuclear-armed missiles on which they were based, Buran is assembled horizontally and moved by rail to the launch pad, where it is raised to vertical. The 4.5-kilometre landing strip that was built for Buran was recently refurbished by an American company to land Russian Antonov cargo aircraft, the only planes large enough to carry big satellites. ![]() ![]() Now the buildings where Buran was designed and built are being renovated to accommodate Western engineers who come to Baikonur for commercial satellite launches by Russian Proton rockets. The new Russian government finally cut off funding in 1992. The Buran project would have employed 30,000 people, and there were plans for up to 30 launches a year. Buran’s only imported component was heat-resistant paint. While the Soviet Union was crumbling around them, Energia’s engineers continued to get funding because the military saw Buran as vital to any missile defence system similar to America’s Star Wars. Flying without a crew, it orbited the Earth twice, before landing on a purpose-built strip at Baikonur.Įnergia built two Buran shuttles and three main boosters to carry them. So far, the giant craft has made only one flight, in 1988. There is no alternative to Buran and I don’t see any coming.” The largest load possible in a Western launcher is little more than 20 tonnes. “By extending the length we can carry 200 tonnes. “Buran is the only launcher with a 100-tonne payload,” he says. Russia’s years-long monopoly on crewed flights to the ISS is also gone, to SpaceX, along with millions of dollars in revenue.“There is a future for this programme,” says Leonid Gurushkin, director of launch operations at Baikonur. It boasted a number of accomplishments that included sending the first man into space in 1961 and launching the first satellite four years earlier.Įxperts say Roscosmos has in recent years suffered a series of setbacks, including corruption scandals and the loss of a number of satellites and other spacecraft. In that era, the Soviet space programme boomed. The ISS was launched in 1998 at a time of hope for US-Russia cooperation following their space race competition during the cold war. Space analysts say construction of a new orbital station could take more than a decade, and Russia’s space industry – a point of national pride – would not be able to flourish under heavy sanctions. The US space agency, Nasa, called the decision an “unfortunate development” that would hinder scientific work on the ISS. Rogozin’s recently appointed successor, Yury Borisov, later confirmed Russia’s long-mooted move to leave the ISS after 2024 in favour of creating its own orbital station. Tensions in the space field have grown since Washington announced sanctions on Moscow’s aerospace industry – triggering warnings from Russia’s former space chief Dmitry Rogozin, an ardent supporter of the Ukraine war. Russian cosmonauts and western astronauts have sought to steer clear of the conflict that is raging back on Earth, especially when in orbit together.Ī collaboration among the US, Canada, Japan, the European Space Agency and Russia, the ISS is split into two sections: the US orbital segment and the Russian orbital segment.Īt present, the ISS depends on a Russian propulsion system to maintain its orbit, about 250 miles above sea level, with the US segment responsible for electricity and life support systems. Kikina will become only the fifth professional female cosmonaut from Russia or the Soviet Union to go into space, and the first Russian to fly onboard a SpaceX craft, from the company of billionaire Elon Musk. Russia’s only female cosmonaut, Anna Kikina, is expected to travel to the orbital station in early October onboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon. Space is one of the last remaining areas of cooperation between the US and Russia. In response, western capitals including Washington have hit Moscow with unprecedented sanctions and bilateral ties have sunk to new lows. Rubio is the first US astronaut to travel to the ISS on a Russian Soyuz rocket since the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, sent troops into Ukraine on 24 February. ![]() Nasa astronaut Frank Rubio (left) and the Roscosmos cosmonauts, Sergey Prokopyev (centre) and Dmitri Petelin (right), walk to the Soyuz spaceship.
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