MOSCOW. Sept 23 (Interfax) - The Baikonur Rocket and Space Corporation has not received any proposals from Roscosmos regarding the future of the Buran spacecraft, the corporation's general director Dauren Musa said.
"No offers have arrived from [Roscosmos head] Dmitry Rogozin, and they are unlikely to arrive," Musa said on Facebook.
Roscosmos head Dmitry Rogozin said in November 2020 that the state of the assembly and testing facility storing the Buran samples was a matter of concern, prompting the Russian state space corporation to consider buying and transferring them to a museum.
Musa said the company had no plans to hand over the Buran to the Russian side.
In turn, Rogozin accused the businessman of careless handling of the spaceship and said he was hoping that a Kazakh court would seize the Buran from the company.
Specialists of the Molniya Scientific and Production Association, the developer of the Buran, visited the spacecraft's storage site in September. It was initially reported that they "tackled issues concerning the spacecraft's transportation back to Russia," but Roscosmos and the enterprise then denied this information.
Two Buran spacecraft were left at Baikonur Cosmodrome. One of them, a flying item, was designed to fly into space and dock with the Mir station automatically. The second item, a mockup, was designed to practice ground operations.
In 2002, the only Buran which flew into space was destroyed during a roof collapse of an assembly and testing facility at Baikonur.
Buran was a Soviet reusable orbital vehicle built under the Energia-Buran program. Its first and only automatic and crewless spaceflight was on November 15, 1988. The program was suspended in 1990 and eventually closed on May 25, 1993 by a decision of the council of chief design engineers at the Scientific Production Association Energia.
During the work on the Buran project, several mockups were built for dynamic, electric, airfield, and other trials. After the program was closed, these items were left on the balance sheet of different research centers and production associations. For instance, it is known that the Energia Rocket and Space Corporation and NPO Molniya own Buran mockups.