Head Of Baikonur Space Company Refusing To Pass On Buran Space Shuttle To Russia

ALMATY (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 08th September, 2021) Director General of Rocket and Space Company (RSC) Baikonur Dauren Mussa says he is not ready to allow Russia to get the semi-assembled Buran (Blizzard) space shuttle out of Kazakhstan.

Kazakhstan is seeking to cancel the transfer of the Buran space shuttle from the Baikonur space center to Russia and wants to return it to state ownership for use in museum expositions.

"They want to take it not to a museum but to the laboratory for NPO Molniya [which designed Buran] for further work under the Energy-Buran program? They want to take it, but who will give it to them?" Mussa said on Facebook on Wednesday.

He added that he was ready to go to international courts to prevent the transfer of Buran.

NPO Molniya said at the start of this month that the decision on the transfer of the space shuttle from Baikonur to Russia had already been made.

In May, the Buran space shuttle was vandalized and the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, said it was going to take charge of the protection of the buildings and facilities that house Buran without waiting for the end of a legal dispute over the shuttle's ownership.

The original Soviet-made Buran shuttle was destroyed in a roof collapse at the Baikonur space center in 2002, after its only space flight in 1988. There exist a few finished and unfinished replicas of the spacecraft in Germany, Russia and Kazakhstan.