The Soviet Union was keenly aware the United States ... In 1957, the US Air Force started the X-20 Dyna-Soar project to develop a manned space plane for orbital reconnaissance, bombing, and ...

The Buran did fly in space – just once, in November 1988, not long before the Soviet Union collapsed. Its lone mission was uncrewed. The Buran relied on an automated launch sequence, rode on an ...

Animation specialist Hazegrayart made a six-minute video of the Russian MTKVA lifting body spaceplane that was meant to ...

In 1974, the Soviet Union launched the Salyut 3 space station, code-named Almaz, which secretly carried a 23-mm Nudelmann aircraft cannon. According to Soviet cosmonauts, tests run on this very ...

This model, which first entered service in 1960, was the first truly modern, second-generation Soviet jet fighter, according to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. Any aircraft owned by ...

The cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin went down in history as the first human ever to enter space. From humble beginnings he would attain the rank of senior lieutenant fighter as a pilot in the Soviet Air ...

Khrushchev, in his speech before the Supreme Soviet on May 5 that a foreign ... a United States National Aeronautical Space Agency unarmed weather research plane based at Adana, Turkey, and ...

The U.S. Space Shuttle, recently retired, was the first operational space plane. The Soviet Union developed its own version of the Shuttle, but never placed it into service. As a partial ...

Science Photo Library Gagarin was killed in a plane crash in 1968 However ... It paved the way for other collaborations on the Soviet space station Mir and, eventually, the International Space ...