The Molniya Research and Production Association (part of the Kalashnikov concern) is actively developing a new civilian reusable complex with an orbital aircraft. This was announced by the general director of the enterprise Olga Sokolova.
“Now the task has been set, and the development of a civilian reusable complex with an orbital aircraft is in full swing,” Sokolova said in an interview published on the company’s website.
As Sokolova specified, the model was presented at the Army forum in a closed pavilion. Now the design bureau continues to improve it, the company is recruiting people to work on the project. “Over the past year, we have made very serious progress in terms of developing a new aerospace complex for civilian use,” said the general director of the enterprise.
In May last year, Dmitry Rogozin, the general director of Roscosmos, announced on the air of the Komsomolskaya Pravda radio that a new manned spacecraft in the form of a spaceplane could be created in Russia. Then Rogozin recalled that the Energia-Buran program had been successfully implemented in the USSR, but the Buran unmanned reusable spacecraft (developed by the Molniya NPO) was in a sense ahead of its time.
“Buran” is a Soviet reusable spacecraft. On November 15, 1988, it was launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome (now Kazakhstan) using the Energia launch vehicle, made two orbits around the Earth and landed on the territory of the cosmodrome. The flight took place without a crew, its duration was 205 minutes. “Buran” became the first spacecraft in history to make an automatic landing.
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