A temporary exhibition on the single flight of the Buran orbiter — the first fully automatic landing of a spacecraft of its class.
On 15 November 1988 Buran completed two orbits of the Earth and landed on the Baikonur runway automatically, deviating from the centreline by only one and a half metres in a 17 m/s crosswind. The exhibition reconstructs that flight minute by minute.
The central exhibits are a thermal-protection tile with its airframe marking, a flight computer of the standard set, and fragments of the landing complex software documentation. A model of the Energia launcher and a combustion chamber of the RD-170 engine show what carried the orbiter into space.
The final section is devoted to the fate of the programme: its closure in 1993, and the people who, twenty years later, preserved the surviving hardware for museums.
Photo: © MASTER SGT. DAVE CASEY / Wikimedia Commons / Public domain
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