On 15 November 1988, the Soviets launched the Buran, Orbiter K1. The first flight of its Space Shuttle program.
It was the first time the Soviets launched a reusable orbiter.
It launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on an expendable Energia rocket.
Here you can see the Buran ready at sunset the day before the launch
This first 3-hour, 20- minute flight was unmanned. A second unmanned mission was planned for 1989. But the collapse of the Soviet union prevented this. The Buran program was officially cancelled in 1993.
With the end of the Soviet Union, the funding for space exploration also dried up. This led to a collapse of a hangar on the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan which housed the Buran in 2002.
The spacecraft was completely destroyed.
