From there, they found a local willing to drop them off on the side of the highway at nightfall, around 20 kilometers (13 miles) from Baikonur. To get there, Jonk and three friends flew to the nearby city of Kyzylorda and took a four-hour bus ride to the small town of Toretam. (Since NASA ended its shuttle program in 2011, American astronauts have hitched rides into space with the Russians.)īaikonur's location in the middle of the vast Kazakh Steppe presented another challenge. For one thing, Baikonur is still an active spaceport-the Russian space program leases the site from Kazakhstan for around $115 million a year, and uses it to launch its own and other country's astronauts into space. But few places were more difficult to access than the Buran hangar. Jonk is a veteran urban explorer, or 'urbexer,' who estimates he's photographed around 1,500 abandoned places around the world. Among them is French photographer Jonk, who managed to sneak into the hangar in April 2018. The site has also been targeted by international adventurers seeking a glimpse at Soviet space history. Over the years, local scavengers have snuck into the hangar to harvest valuable metals and electronics. The other two-including the shuttle that was scheduled to fly the second mission-are rotting away in an abandoned hangar in another part of the sprawling Baikonur complex. One, a full-scale test model, is on display at the Baikonur Cosmodrome Museum. Today, three versions of the Buran survive.

Russian space shuttle copied