It is basically a Bison bomber modified to carry oversize cargo on its back such as the white Energia propellant tank seen here. But I was only able to get a distant view of it.ĭistant view of a VM-T Atlant cargo plane (on the right under the bridge crane) at the Zhukovsky Air Base in May 1999. As luck would have it, I could see a VM-T Atlant parked on the far side of the airfield from Buran with a huge Energia propellant tank still on its back. It had sufficient lift capability to carry an unfinished Buran fuselage or individual, empty propellant tanks of the gigantic Energia launch vehicle that was to send Buran into orbit (see “ The Largest Launch Vehicles Through History“). In the interim, they did modify the Myasishchev M-4 strategic bomber (better known in the West as the Bison bomber) to carry oversize cargo on its back called the VM-T Atlant. It was not until the introduction of the Antonov An-225 in 1988 (which, by most measures, is the largest aircraft in the world) that the Soviets finally had an aircraft large enough. But unlike the Enterprise which was carried aloft by a modified Boeing 747 carrier (which would also be used during the Shuttle program to ferry orbiters across the country), the Soviet Union did not have an aircraft large enough at this time to carry a completed Buran shuttle aloft. Its mission was to perform approach and landing tests of Buran much as the Enterprise did during 1977 as part of the American Space Shuttle program. The Buran BTS-002 was built in 1984 by NPO Molniya located in Moscow. The Buran was the Soviet equivalent of the American Space Shuttle. It was during this trip outside of Moscow that I got one of the biggest surprises of my professional life.Ĭlose up of the nose and forward hatch of the Buran BTS-002. On this field trip, we were taken to a facility far outside of Moscow to discuss use of some Russian aircraft in a proposal to continue aircraft-based data collection campaigns beyond 1999 (see “ A Glimpse of the Russian M-55 Geophysica High-Altitude Aircraft – May 1999“). By 1999 we had been conducting a series of aircraft flights for about four years to obtain data to support the development of instruments for RAMOS as well as refine our science objectives. And as with almost every trip to Moscow, there was the inevitable field trip to some Russian contractor’s facility to get “The Grand Tour”. During the last week of May 1999, I was making my second trip to Russia to meet with our international partners – my second trip to Russia in two years but, as the RAMOS program was ramping up along with my responsibilities, the first of what would turn into almost five years of regular trips to Russia every three or four months.īeing only the second of my eventual umpteen trips to Moscow, the novelty had yet to wear off and there were plenty of new things to see and experience. The goal of the RAMOS program was to launch a pair of satellites into a 500-km orbit to obtain stereo observations of clouds and other atmospheric phenomena with 100-meter footprints using a suite of instruments covering wavelengths from the ultraviolet out to the long-wave infrared. Between 1994 and its cancellation in 2004, I was involved as a member of the American science team in the joint US/Russian RAMOS (Russian American Observation Satellites) program. Life is filled with surprises big and small.
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