It outlines the main objectives and general characteristics of a two-turn flight, a ballistic scheme with selected sections, as well as schemes for launching and returning the ship to Earth
MOSCOW, November 15. /tass/. The Buran spacecraft made its first and only flight on November 15, 1988. By the 35th anniversary of this event, Roscosmos published several declassified materials, including the ship's flight program.
It outlines the main objectives and general characteristics of a two-turn flight, a ballistic scheme with selected sections, as well as schemes for launching and returning the ship to Earth.
The key purpose of the flight was to test and test in real conditions both the launch of the Buran into orbit using the Energia launch vehicle, and its independent descent from orbit and further landing. These two sections of the mission were designated as "the most stressful for the initial stage of flight tests of a reusable orbiter."
As part of the flight program, a procedure was provided for in case of failure of one of the engines. So, if one of the launch vehicle engines had failed, Buran would have been forced to fly along a single-turn suborbital trajectory, and if the failure had occurred in the first 190 seconds of the flight, it would have had to resort to a return maneuver altogether.
In addition, the document presents a table with the probabilities of an emergency, as well as a fall on the territory of a particular country. According to her, the most dangerous area was the descent and landing, but even there the probability of an accident was less than a quarter of a percent. It is noted that if there was a malfunction in this section, the ship could fall on the territory of Morocco, Algeria, Corsica, Italy, Yugoslavia, Hungary and Romania.
The flight program also provided for the option of extending the mission to four or even five turns to avoid falling in populated areas of the Earth in case of malfunctions. However, in this case, it was planned not to land the Buran at the Baikonur airfield, but to flood it in a safe area in the South Pacific Ocean.
About the Buran ship
Buran is a Soviet reusable spacecraft. It was a low-wing monoplane, similar in appearance to the American Space Shuttle, but unlike it, it had the ability to land in automatic mode and emergency ejection of the crew. Buran was also capable of making long (up to 30 days) flights, orbital maneuvering, controlled descent and airplane landing at a specially equipped airfield.
The plans included the creation of five ships; as a result, two copies were completely built, another "Buran" was ready for 30-50%. The fourth and fifth ships were laid down, but their construction never began.
Buran made its flight on November 15, 1988. The ship launched from Baikonur with the help of an Energia launch vehicle, made two orbits around the Earth and landed on the territory of the cosmodrome. The flight took place without a crew, its duration was 205 minutes.
It was planned that during another flight, the second copy of the Buran would carry out a seven-day mission, also in an unmanned version. The flight program included docking with the Mir orbital station and testing the onboard manipulator. The third Buran was already being prepared for a manned flight - the plans included servicing orbital stations with its help and launching spacecraft into orbit.
The Buran program was soon suspended due to lack of funding. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, it was transferred from the Ministry of Defense to the jurisdiction of the Russian Space Agency and closed in 1993. Buran, which went into orbit, was destroyed as a result of the collapse of the roof of the assembly and test building at Baikonur in 2002. The second flight model has never been in space.
