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The world's largest aircraft, the Antonov AN-225, has been destroyed during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, according to Ukrainian officials, generating alarm and sadness among the aviation world... There has been no independent confirmation of the aircraft's destruction. A tweet from the Antonov Company said it could not verify the "technical condition" of the aircraft until it had been inspected by experts. Ukrainian state defense company Ukroboronprom, which manages Antonov, on Sunday issued a statement saying the aircraft had been destroyed... If confirmed, the attack would mark a shocking end to an aircraft that has seen more than 30 years...

(CNN)What was once the gleaming pride and joy of the Soviet space program now lies covered in dirt and bird droppings in a disused hangar in Kazakhstan. With their broken windows, missing tiles and ransacked interiors, these shuttles are a haunting -- and fascinating -- piece of space history, rarely seen by the outside world. Indeed, when 36-year-old Russian photographer Ralph Mirebs discovered the derelict shuttles and rocket at Baikonur Cosmodrome, he was touched by the sad end for these "wonderful winged machines."

The Polyus military testbed was put together on a crash basis as an answer to America's Star Wars program. It was built around a surplus TKS manned spacecraft and was meant to test prototype ASAT and Star Wars defense systems. It failed to reach orbit, but it had succeeded, it would have been the core module of a new Mir-2 space station. Its mere presence could have decisively changed the shape of the Cold War in its final months. In 1985, it became clear that the Energia launch vehicle would be ready for launch before the Buran space shuttle that...

The Soviet-era Buran space programme, mothballed 20 years ago, may be revived. With NASA about to retire its ageing fleet of space shuttles, there is a pressing need for viable space transport. Propeller Two decades ago the Soviet space shuttle Buran blasted off on its first and only orbital flight. Just a few years later, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the programme was shelved. The Buran was the Soviet Union's answer to NASA’s space shuttle programme. On November 15, 1988, the shuttle was propelled out of the Earth’s atmosphere by the specially designed Energia booster rocket from the...

Russian shuttle with space mines retiresIt was built to take on America in Cold War star wars, but now a Russian version of the US Space Shuttle has come to earth with a bump to end in a German museum. The Buran ­ or Blizzard ­ orbiter, was designed to be equipped with high-technology lasers or missiles and space mines, as Soviet war planners assumed America has weaponised the Space Shuttle. But 15 years after the project was finally shut down in 1993, marking the end of the Cold War's most ambitious and expensive confrontations, Buran is making a much...

http://foto.netwind.ru/albums/baikonur/

<p>The Soviet Union did indeed build its own version of the American Space Shuttle that was known as Buran ("snowstorm" in Russian). The US had made the decision to develop its reusable spacecraft in 1972. Since the US Defense Department had plans to use the Shuttle for military missions, Moscow felt the need to respond with a comparable craft in order to maintain strategic parity with the West. The Reusable Space System (MKS) was subsequently approved in June 1974 with NPO Energia given responsibility for the project the following October. Though only the first spaceworthy vehicle built was actually named Buran, the entire project came to be known by this designation.</p>