Web Special

The Buran – The Soviet Space Shuttle Success Story

This web special is dedicated to the 30th anniversary of the first and only flight of the spaceship Buran, a reusable orbiter capable of putting different payloads into space and bringing cargoes back to Earth. Conceived as an “analysis of the flight” on 15 November 1988, it goes into detail about the most difficult stages of the Soviet rocket plane’s mission, including the landing, which for the first time in history was fully automatic. Each of the web special’s four chapters contains interactive inserts, and one of the most complex visualisations of the project is a detailed 3D model of the Buran.

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