

Mirebs’ photos showed this forgotten Russian space program derelict and frozen in time. Unfortunately, this shuttle was destroyed in a hangar collapse in 2002. The only operational Russian space shuttle from Buran, Orbiter 1K1, completed one unmanned orbital flight before it was grounded. The Buran prototype shuttles found in the abandoned hangar by Mirebs, however, are from an earlier era – they are the last remnants of a space program that began in 1974 and was finally shuttered in 1993. Not only the Baikonur station is the world’s first and largest space exploration and shuttle launch facility, but it is also from here that the first artificial satellite and the first human spaceflight of the famous Yuri Gagarin were launched. On the two occasions when a security officer stopped by to check on the hangars, the watchman used a walkie-talkie to warn the others to stay quiet.The abandoned hangar is located at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, which is still in operation today (with the close of NASA’s shuttle program, Russian Soyuz shuttles are the only way for astronauts to reach the International Space Station). To avoid security patrols, they took turns performing guard duty on the roof of the hangar. More than two decades ago, heavy sliding doors of an assembling and filling complex were closed cutting off two orbiting spacecraft from the sky. They also snuck into a nearby hangar housing a prototype of the old Energia-M rocket used to blast the Buran into space. This episode: Buran - the one hit wonder of the. "Of all the abandoned sites I've explored, this was by far the most impressive," he says. Buran Buran - Russias Abandoned Space Shuttles The Air Show 4.83K subscribers Subscribe 1.6K Share 356K views 8 years ago Rewind Wednesday. Despite the dismal storage conditions, they found the shuttles to be in better condition than expected. "To see it abandoned in the dark like that was something I'll never forget." After bedding down in sleeping bags inside the hangar for a few hours, Jonk and his three-man team spent the next two days exploring and photographing the two shuttles. "When I finally passed my flashlight over the shuttle, it was amazing," he recalls. Climbing in through an unlocked window, they began looking for the shuttles in the cavernous, pitch-dark building. Jonk and company arrived at the hangar at around 2 am, and found it unguarded. Find Abandoned Buran Russian Space Shuttle Moscow stock images in HD and millions of other royalty-free stock photos, illustrations and vectors in the. Using a GPS device programmed with the hangar's coordinates, they hiked across the rocky steppe for seven hours, wearing headlamps to see their way. From there, they found a local willing to drop them off on the side of the highway at nightfall, around 20 kilometers (13 miles) from Baikonur. To get there, Jonk and three friends flew to the nearby city of Kyzylorda and took a four-hour bus ride to the small town of Toretam. Stunning photographs show the abandoned remains of one of the Soviet Buran space shuttles - which has been left to rot in a deserted hangar near the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan As part. (Since NASA ended its shuttle program in 2011, American astronauts have hitched rides into space with the Russians.)īaikonur's location in the middle of the vast Kazakh Steppe presented another challenge. For one thing, Baikonur is still an active spaceport-the Russian space program leases the site from Kazakhstan for around $115 million a year, and uses it to launch its own and other country's astronauts into space. But few places were more difficult to access than the Buran hangar. Jonk is a veteran urban explorer, or "urbexer," who estimates he's photographed around 1,500 abandoned places around the world. Among them is French photographer Jonk, who managed to sneak into the hangar in April 2018. The site has also been targeted by international adventurers seeking a glimpse at Soviet space history. Over the years, local scavengers have snuck into the hangar to harvest valuable metals and electronics. Its been gathering dust here for nearly 30 years. These specially designed vehicles gave the Soviets. The other two-including the shuttle that was scheduled to fly the second mission-are rotting away in an abandoned hangar in another part of the sprawling Baikonur complex. A Soviet-era Buran shuttle lies abandoned in a hangar at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Instead, as part of the Buran shuttle design series, it was attached to a massive rocket named Energia. One, a full-scale test model, is on display at the Baikonur Cosmodrome Museum. Today, three versions of the Buran survive.
