Unmanned test of Soviet shuttle. Buran was first moved to the
launch pad on 23 October 1988. The launch commission met on 26 October 1988 and set 29 October 06:23
Moscow time for the first flight of the first Buran orbiter (Flight 1K1). 51 seconds before the launch,
when control of the countdown switched to automated systems, a software problem led the computer program
to abort the lift-off. The problem was found to be due to late separation of a gyro update umbilical.
The software problem was rectified and the next attempt was set for 15 November at 06:00 (03:00 GMT).
Came the morning, the weather was snow flurries with 20 m/s winds. Launch abort criteria were 15 m/s.
The launch director decided to press ahead anyway. After 12 years of development everything went
perfectly. Buran, with a mass of 79.4 tonnes, separated from the Block Ts core and entered a temporary
orbit with a perigee of -11.2 km and apogee of 154.2 km. At apogee Burn executed a 66.6 m/s manoeuvre and
entered a 251 km x 263 km orbit of the earth. In the payload bay was the 7150 kg module 37KB s/n 37071.
140 minutes into the flight retrofire was accomplished with a total delta-v of 175 m/s. 206 minutes after
launch, accompanied by Igor Volk in a MiG-25 chase plane, Buran touched down at 260 km/hr in a 17 m/s
crosswind at the Jubilee runway, with a 1620 m landing rollout. The completely automatic launch, orbital
manoeuvre, deorbit, and precision landing of an airliner-sized spaceplane on its very first flight was an
unprecedented accomplishment of which the Soviets were justifiably proud. It completely vindicated
the years of exhaustive ground and flight test that had debugged the systems before they flew.
