The Buran spacecraft was the Soviet Union's response to NASA's space shuttle program. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.

When U.S. space shuttles ... the U.S. shuttle design in the '70s and '80s. That theft permitted the Soviet Union to build its own carbon copy of the U.S. system, called the Buran, thus ...

Moscow had known for years that Washington had been tinkering with winged, reusable spacecraft. Designs such as the X-20 Dyna-Soar had tipped America’s hand. The Space Shuttle project was ...

the Soviet Union stunned western observers by launching Buran, its clone of the NASA space shuttle, into low Earth orbit. After circling the globe twice, the uncrewed spacecraft – its name means ...

When the spaceplane’s landing gear struck the runway on July 21, 2011, it marked the end of the line for the Space Shuttle ... be tested on the Soviet Buran, although the prototype that ...