Video: Soviet Shuttle Buran Launch

The Soviet reusable spacecraft program Buran ("Бура́н" meaning "snowstorm" or "blizzard" in Russian) began in 1976 at TsAGI as a response to the United States Space Shuttle program.

Soviet politicians were convinced that the Space Shuttle would be an effective military weapon since the U.S. Department of Defense took part in the project, and could pose a potential threat to the balance of power during the Cold War. The project was the largest and the most expensive in the history of Soviet space exploration.

The project was the largest and the most expensive in the history of Soviet space exploration.

The construction of the shuttles began in 1980 and by 1984 the first full-scale Buran was rolled out. The first suborbital test flight of a scale-model, however, took place as early as July 1983. As the project progressed, five additional scale-model flights were performed. A test vehicle was constructed with four jet engines mounted at the rear; this vehicle is usually referred to as OK-GLI, or as the "Buran aerodynamic analog".

The jets were used to take off from a normal landing strip, and once it reached a designated point, the engines were cut and OK-GLI glided back to land. This provided invaluable information about the handling characteristics of the Buran design, and was much more convenient than the carrier plane/air drop method used by the USA and the Enterprise test craft. Twenty-four test flights of OK-GLI were performed after which the shuttle was "worn out".