The Buran was the Soviet Union’s answer to NASA's Space Shuttle, featuring innovations like automated flight and superior ...

Built to rival NASA’s shuttle, the Buran flew just once—unmanned, flawless, and then never again. This is the story behind the USSR’s ambitious clone.

The Molniya facility designed the long-mothballed Buran space shuttle in the 1980s in response the launch of the U.S. space shuttle program during the Cold War era. But the Buran flew only once.