Missions

A typical BOR-4 mission would begin with a launch from the Kapustin Yar cosmo­drome near Volgograd using a modified two-stage Kosmos-3M booster known as K65M-RB5. Baykonur no longer supported that rocket at the time and although Plesetsk did it was situated too far north to place the spaceplane models into the proper inclination. The rockets used for the BOR-4 missions had originally been earmarked for other missions, but had already exceeded their guaranteed “shelf life’’ and would have been used for test launches anyway.

The vehicle would be launched with its two wings completely folded so that it fitted under the rocket’s fairing. After release from the launch vehicle, the wings were unfolded to a position that would keep the vehicle stable during re-entry at an angle of attack of between 52° and 57° between altitudes of 70 and 60 km. Orientation in orbit was carried out with the help of eight microthrusters burning hypergolic propellants. After a single revolution of the Earth, BOR-4 initiated its descent back to Earth, firing what is believed to have been a jettisonable solid-fuel motor mounted on top of the vehicle. At an altitude of 30 km the on-board control system sent BOR-4 on a steep spiralling trajectory to decrease speed and at 7.5 km the spacecraft deployed a parachute that reduced the vertical landing speed to 7-8 m/s.

Since the vehicle was not equipped with landing gear, it needed to land on water to ensure that its heat shield remained intact for post-flight analysis. The only major bodies of water on Soviet territory that would be in the BOR’s flight path were the Black Sea and Lake Balkhash. However, the Russians had never returned a winged vehicle or lifting body from orbit and were not confident they could aim the space­craft for precision splashdowns in the Soviet Union. Therefore they opted to land the first vehicles in the Indian Ocean, where they would still come down in water even if they fell short of or overshot the planned landing area. That did, however, signifi­cantly increase the cost of the recovery operations, which, moreover, would be hard to conceal from the prying eyes of Western reconnaissance aircraft.

After splashdown a conically shaped float was inflated on top of the spacecraft to improve its buoyancy. The float also had flashing lights and antennae to make it easier for the recovery forces to locate the BOR. Before being hoisted on board a recovery ship, a crew was sent out to the vehicle to disarm an on-board self-destruct system.

While BOR-4 was designed in Zhukovskiy under the leadership of LII chief Viktor V. Utkin, the vehicle was manufactured and covered with heat-resistant materials at the Tushino Machine Building Factory. The man in charge of the BOR-4 program at NPO Molniya was Stepan A. Mikoyan, a deputy of chief designer Gleb Lozino-Lozinskiy. The BOR-4 test flights were coordinated by a State Commis­sion headed by former cosmonaut Gherman Titov, then serving as a deputy head of GUKOS. Titov, incidentally, had also been part of the Spiral cosmonaut training group at Star City in the 1960s.

The orbital flights were preceded by an experimental suborbital launch on 5 December 1980 in the direction of Lake Balkhash. This mission was intended to test the rocket, the aerodynamic characteristics of the vehicle, and the performance of the aerodynamic surfaces and rocket thrusters. Designated BOR-4S (serial nr. 401), the vehicle only had the original ablative heat shield. The final part of the flight was monitored by two Ilyushin 18RT aircraft flying in the vicinity of Lake Balkhash. These were modified Ilyushin 18D aircraft specially adapted to perform tracking in areas that were not covered by Soviet ground-based or sea-based tracking means.

In the spring of 1982 seven Soviet ships set sail for the Indian Ocean to support the first orbital mission of a BOR-4 vehicle. These included two vessels to ensure communications between the fleet and the home front, namely the Navy’s Chumikan and the Academy of Sciences’ Kosmonavt Georgiy Dobrovolskiy. In no time Royal Australian Air Force P-3C Orion reconnaissance aircraft deployed from RAAF Base Williams in Point Cook were circling overhead to monitor the vessels’ activities.

Finally, on 3 June 1982 the first BOR-4 covered with Buran’s heat shield materials (serial nr. 404) was successfully placed into orbit. After a single orbit the vehicle fired its deorbit engine and re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere, performing a cross-range maneuver that took it about 600 km to the south of its orbital path. The craft gently splashed down some 560 km south of the Cocos Islands, which was about 200 km from its intended landing point. The recovery operation was seriously hampered by stormy seas. Battling high waves, recovery forces on board the vessel Yamal needed several attempts to hoist the BOR-4 on deck. During one of those

Kosmos-1374 being hoisted aboard the Yamal (source: Royal Australian Air Force).

attempts, the vehicle accidentally bumped into the Yamal, causing significant damage to the spacecraft’s nose section. The entire operation was photographed by an Australian Orion aircraft, which according to Russian eyewitnesses flew so low that the slipstream nearly knocked them off their feet.

The TASS news agency issued a routine statement saying a satellite called Kosmos-1374 had been launched for “the further study of outer space’’, providing no hint of its real mission. It only differed from the standard Kosmos launch announcement by adding that “the scientific research envisaged by the program had been carried out.’’ Within a week US media reports were suggesting the mission had been a test of a small shuttle vehicle, although some argued it had been a test of a prototype spaceborne nuclear weapon targeted on US and British naval forces in the Indian Ocean.

State Commission leader Gherman Titov, who had already pushed for a Black Sea landing on the first mission, now turned to the Military Industrial Commission with a request to have the next BOR-4 land in the Black Sea, expressing his fear the ship could be captured by the Americans. However, he was overruled by his superiors, possibly because Kosmos-1374 had landed well off target and a splash­down in the much smaller Black Sea could not yet be guaranteed. On 15 March 1983, Kosmos-1445 (serial nr. 403) was launched on a repeat mission, coming down 556 km south of the Cocos Islands. On station in the Indian Ocean apart from Navy vessels of the Black Sea fleet were the tracking ships Kosmonavt Vladislav Volkov and Kosmonavt Pavel Belyayev. Two Il-18RT tracking aircraft were in the skies over

Kosmos-1445 on board the Yamal (source: Royal Australian Air Force).

Afghanistan to monitor the final part of the re-entry. Coming in the middle of the Soviet-Afghan war, their missions were not without risk and they were protected by a whole squadron of Soviet fighter jets.

Kosmos-1445 was again retrieved by the Yamal. Better prepared than during the Kosmos-1374 mission, the Australian Air Force once again sent out P-3C Orion aircraft to monitor the recovery operation and obtained even better pictures than before, some of which were released to the public by the Australian Ministry of Defense in April 1983. Also keeping a close eye on events were several Australian Navy vessels, which reportedly came so close that the Soviet crew members could use their binoculars to catch a glimpse of the movies shown on giant screens on the upper decks in the evening.

Confident enough now they could bring back the BORs with sufficient precision, the Russians decided to land the next two BORs in the Black Sea just west of Simferopol. The first was launched on 27 December 1983 as Kosmos-1517 (serial nr. 405) and the second was orbited on 19 December 1984 as Kosmos-1614 (serial nr. 406). The TASS launch announcements differed from the earlier ones in acknowl­edging that the satellites “had performed a controlled entry into the atmosphere and

Kosmos-1517 shows the effects of re-entry (source: www. buran. ru).

landed in the pre-designated area of the Black Sea.” While Kosmos-1517 was successfully retrieved by the Yamal, it was later revealed that Kosmos-1614 was lost, having either burned up in the atmosphere or sunk in the Black Sea. The recovery vessels, aircraft, and helicopters searched the 70 x 30 km landing ellipse for about a week, but to no avail. Talking about the cause of the mishap many years later, State Commission leader Gherman Titov said that “while fixing one problem, engineers had created another.”

Despite the failure to recover the final vehicle, it was felt that enough data had been gathered during the four orbital flights that a fifth mission was reportedly canceled. The Russians later said the missions had allowed them to test the effects of aerodynamic, temperature, and acoustic loads as well as vibrations on the heat shield between altitudes of 100 and 30 km and speeds of between Mach 25 and Mach 3. Particularly helpful had been the temperature data obtained in critical areas such as the nosecap and the underbelly of the vehicle. The BOR-4 missions had helped to determine the ideal size of gaps between the tiles, measure the “catalytic activity” of the heat shield in real plasma conditions, and also to study the risks associated with losing one or more tiles. The flights had also made it possible to “outline measures to reduce the mass of Buran’s heatshield”, although there is no evidence those measures were actually implemented [17].