The ІаипсЬ

Fueling of Energiya was completed three hours before launch and that of the LOX tanks of Buran’s ODU propulsion system at T — 2h45m. A critical point came at T — 10 minutes, when the countdown switched to automatic control. Controllers breathed a sigh of relief when the balky azimuthal alignment plate responsible for the 29 October scrub retracted as planned at T — 51 seconds. With sound suppression water gushing onto the pad, the four RD-0120 engines of the Energiya 1L rocket roared to life at T — 9.9 seconds and smoothly built up thrust, clearing the way for ignition of the four strap-on boosters at T — 3.7 seconds. With all engines at full thrust and no problems detected, Energiya-Buran slowly lifted off the pad exactly as planned at 6: 00.00 Moscow time. It was a highly emotional moment for the thousands of people who had dedicated many years of their lives to this program ever since its approval in February 1976, although the atmosphere in the nearby control bunker was said to be business-like as all eyes were focused on the perform­ance of the rocket and orbiter.

As it cleared the tower, the stack performed a 28.7° roll maneuver to place it in the proper position for ascent. For onlookers the launch proved to be rather anticli­mactic. Just seconds after clearing the launch tower, Energiya-Buran disappeared into the low cloud deck. “What a pity for the photographers,” Pravda wrote the following day. “Standing out there freezing in the steppes all night and then every­thing is over in the blink of an eye” [51].

The only persons to maintain visual contact with the vehicle after that were the crews of an An-26 weather reconnaissance plane and the MiG-25 SOTN chase plane. The task of the chase plane during launch was not only to shoot video of the stack, but also to accompany Buran to the runway in the event of a return-to-launch-site abort. Behind the controls of the chase plane, which had taken off ten minutes before launch, was LII pilot Magomed Tolboyev, accompanied by cameraman Sergey Zhadovskiy. “It’s on its way! It’s going!” Tolboyev enthusiastically radioed to the ground as the stack broke through the clouds. Somewhat later he called out: “Engine operating mode changing.’’ He was referring to a reduction in thrust of both the core stage’s RD-0120 engines (between T + 30s and T + 1m11s) and the strap-on boosters’ RD-170 engines (between T + 39s and T + 1m15s) as the rocket and orbiter passed through the phase of maximum aerodynamic pressure.

At T + 2m23.95s the four strap-ons shut down their RD-170 engines and at T + 2m25.85s separated in pairs from the core stage. The separation was clearly visible from the MiG-25, with Tolboyev reporting:

“The strap-ons have separated! They’re on their way back to the ground…

Great. We can see them falling together, in parallel.’’

Not long after separation from the rocket each pair of boosters split in two, with all four now headed back to Earth individually. The boosters were not equipped with parachute systems for this mission and crashed into the steppes some 420 km from the launch pad about 7 minutes after separation.

Not long after booster separation the MiG-25 lost sight of the stack as it moved further downrange and eventually disappeared behind the horizon. All eyes were now focused on the telemetry being received from Soviet tracking stations and relayed to TsUP near Moscow. About 3 minutes into the launch, Buran reached the point where it could no longer return to the Baykonur cosmodrome for an emergency landing. As the stack sped further towards orbit, a camera installed behind one of Buran’s cockpit windows began sending back images of the Earth. At T + 6m53s the core stage’s RD-0120 engines began slowly throttling down and eventually shut down at T + 7m47.8s. Energiya’s job done, members of the rocket team quietly shook hands beneath the table, celebrating the second successful flight of the launch vehicle in as many attempts. Now it was up to the orbiter team to finish the job. Buran was now in a theoretical —11.2 x 154.2 km orbit and, if nothing were done, would re-enter shortly afterwards.

Separation of the orbiter from the core stage took place at T + 8m02.8s at an altitude of roughly 150 km. The core stage was scheduled to re-enter the atmosphere, with fragments coming down in the Pacific some 19,500 km from the launch point. After firing its thrusters to move to a safe distance from the core stage, Buran now positioned itself for a critical burn of one of its two DOM orbital maneuvering engines to impart the 66.7 m/s of additional velocity needed to reach orbit. The burn, monitored by the easternmost Soviet ground stations as Buran headed for the Soviet – Chinese border, got underway at T + 11m28s and lasted 67 seconds.

About thirty-five minutes later, at T + 46m07s, as Buran came within range of the tracking ships Dobrovolskiy and Nedelin in the South Pacific, one of the DOM engines burned for another 40 seconds (delta-V of 41.7m/s) to place the orbiter into its final 247 x 255 km orbit. Inclination was 51.6°, the same as that of the Mir space station, but the two were in different orbital planes. Since this was a conservative two – orbit test flight, there was no need for Buran to further increase its orbital altitude.

Although Soviet media did not carry the launch live, both Radio Moscow World Service and the Soviet domestic Mayak radio station reported the launch at the very beginning of their 3: 00 gmt newscasts. The World Service even optimistically said Buran had been placed into orbit, although orbital insertion was still at least ten minutes away. At 4: 10 gmt Mayak broadcast a recorded live report of the launch from its reporters both at Baykonur and in Mission Control in Kaliningrad. Moscow television showed the first footage of the launch 1.5 hours after blast-off. The TASS news agency issued the following official statement on the launch:

“On 15 November 1988 at 6.00 Moscow Time the Soviet Union launched the

universal rocket space transportation system Energiya with the reusable ship

Buran. At 6.47 the orbital ship went into the planned orbit. The test program envisages a two-orbit flight of the orbital ship around the Earth and a landing in automatic mode at the Baykonur cosmodrome at 9.25 Moscow time.”