Buran-Energia

I had the occasion to visit, this summer, the Cosmonautic museum of Kaluga. This is the first museum about space exploration, it was built in 1967 under the decision of S.P. Korolev, even if it is a little bit old it is still an astonishing place because of its assortments and rockets.

The visit begins here.

Here is some pictures, of the personal collection of Eugene Arseniev, taken during the arrival of the EPOS at the Monino base.

More pictures in the gallery.

Source: Orbicraft.

On last September 29 was a tsunami, caused by an earthquake 200km South West of the archipelago, which devastated the american Samoa’s island and killed about 200 people. The islands were severly damaged and many installations were destroyed or badly injured, like two electrical power plants.

The american president Barack Obama declared the Samoa islands in emergency state: he allocated a federal subvention to help the assistance. The FEMA arraigned to fly in some replacement generators, that arrived on the 13th October. The Mriya touched down in the early hours and left late afternoon after discharging ten large generators, fuel tanks and other equipments.

Thanks to Derek W. for the pictures.

Here is some pictures I took in the Tushino’s suburbs where Buran OK-2.01 is parked.

Landing gear.

Actuator of the vertical stabilizer.

Reinforced Carbon Carbon tile (leading edge of the wing).

Braking parachute it’s weighting 175kg and was used to slow down the shuttle after it’s landing. We can see on the third picture the user’s guide.

I recently visited the Memorial museum of Astronautics in Moscow, this museum is located under the Space Conqueror monument near the VDNKh park.
The museum reopened this year (on April 12, 2009) with pomp and circumstance and now exhibit many interesting objects.

The visit starts here.

Here is an interview I had with Igor Volk test pilot of the Buran space shuttle.
He was selected in 1978 to become the chief of the test pilot crew of Buran and flew on the space station Salyut 7 in 1984 to test the aptitude of a cosmonaut to pilot the Buran on the way back.

The journey go on with the visit today of the Tsiolkovsky’s house. This house is located in the Kaluga town in the Tsiolkovsky’s street, not far from the Oka river.

It’s here.

During my recent trip in Moscow I had the occasion to visit the MAI museum, here are the pictures I took.