Buran-Energia

From April 5 to August 28 at the Palais de la Découverte in Paris take place an exhibition about the historic flight of Yuri Gagarin, and some important dates of the space exploration.

This exhibition is made of very interesting photographs chosen by the Russian press agency RIA Novosti.

On Monday evening April, 4th was the inauguration of this exhibition with Russian and French cosmonauts and the Russian ambassador Alexander Orlov.

The cosmonauts were:

- Serguey Zhukov, russian cosmonaut,
- Alexander Skvorstov, russian cosmonaut, Soyuz TMA – 18,
- Jean-Loup Chrétien, CNES cosmonaut, first european to go in space in 1982
- Jean-François Clervoy, ESA astronaut, CEO of Novespace,
- Léopold Eyharts, ESA astronaut and before from CNES
- Jean-Pierre Haigneré, ESA astronaut and before from CNES,
- Thomas Pesquet, ESA astronaut,
- Michel Tognini, ESA astronaut, Chief of the European Astronaut Center (EAC), at Cologne.

The event begun by a serie of questions/answers with the cosmonauts about the flight of Gagarin, a retrospection about the last 50 years and the possible ways of futur evolution for space exploration. A movie made by TV Roscosmos was showed on the screen and finally the intervention of Paolo Nespoli (Italian astronaut of the ESA) in direct from the International Space Station closed the event.

After that we were allowed to visit the exhibition with the cosmonauts like Serguey Zhukov.

Here are some pictures of the inauguration and the exhibition:

Here is a reporting broadcasted on TV Roscosmos about a project of a space plane for tourists. This project is developed by the Myasichev design bureau from the VM-T Atlant plane which will be used as a launch plane for a smaller shuttle equipped with a rocket engine.

This shuttle will have three seats of which one for the pilot and will fly up to 100 km height. The project has been studied for some years now, and a full scale (not working) mock-up of the shuttle was made to be used as a demonstrator.

The Mriya landed today morning at the Marcel Dassault airport (France) to bring freight and men to Japan.

It will carry 140 tons of various materials (especially made to work in contaminated environment) such as robots and construction vehicles. The French specialists are made of volunteers and will help their Japaneses counterparts to work on the nuclear power plants.

Update:

Update (28/03/11), lift off of the Mriya from the Marcel Dassault airport.

Source: Nouvelle république.

I wanted to publish a page about the Air and Space museum of Le Bourget for a long time, and here they are the pictures of the space lobby. This museum is the biggest French museum about space exploration, and it is a must see for people you wants to know more about the early French and European space exploration.

This museum is also dedicated to aviation and has some very nice objects like two Concordes and Bleriots.

For the visit of the space lobby it’s here.

Near the battlements of the Peter and Paul’s Fortress, of St Petersburg, is located a museum dedicated to the first works of the LenGIRD and then to the space exploration of the USSR. The museum is named after Valentin P. Glushko who was one of the firsts founder’s of the LenGIRD (Group for the Study of Reactive Motion) in 1931.

The visit begins here.

The first issue of Espace et Exploration (Space and Exploration) will be available in kiosks on next december 22, it will be publish every 2 months for only 5,90€

There will be, news about space, informations about manned space flights, view of space, interviews, etc. Well, only interesting things.

It’s good to know that a new magazine 100% about space is on it’s way to our homes, I missed it !!

Unfortunatly, it’s only in French.

More informations on the website: espace-exploration.com.

Here is a set of videos published by TV Roscosmos and TsAGI press about the TsAGI test insitute.

This institute is 90 years old and is a necessary step in the validation process of all flying apparatus in the Russian Federation and previously in the USSR.

The development of the Buran shuttle and Energia launch vehicle also needed batch tests in wind tunnels like we can see in the reportings.

TsAGI press:

TV Roscosmos:

Some days ago TV Roscomos published a reporting about the Buran-Energia program named Последний « Буран » Империи (The last Snowstorm of the Empire).

It was the most expensive space program of the USSR, but after one successful flight, in automatic regime, the project was grounded and then stopped.
This reporting explains why the Soviets choose to build a shuttle and why it was done this way.

From: TV Roscosmos.