By this time, the perfectly operational (and very expensive) Mriya was sitting idle, another Soviet white elephant. The Buran program was scrapped for good in 1993, two years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The Buran made its first and only uncrewed launch in 1988 from the ground using a specially designed Energia rocket. The massive aircraft’s mission was to piggyback the Buran to its launch site in Kazakhstan, but there was even a plan to use the Mriya to haul the Soviet shuttle to a high altitude from there on the shuttle would fire its boosters to accelerate into space. Mriya, which means “dream” or “inspiration” in Ukrainian, was originally meant to transport Buran-class orbiters, the Soviet version of NASA’s space shuttle. It required a crew of six.ĪDVERTISEMENT Antonov An-225 with Soviet space shuttle Buran on top, 1989. The An-225 Mriya could fly at a maximum speed of 850km/h and had a range of aircraft varying between 4,000 km and 15,400 km depending on whether it was fully loaded or unloaded. The behemoth with wings was derived from the An-124 Ruslan (NATO designation “Condor”) with important modifications, including the lengthening of fuselage and wingspan, the addition of two engines, redesign of the tail with twin vertical fins, increase in the number of landing gear tires to 32 and the removal of the rear cargo doors. Development of the first prototype began in 1984 at Antonov Design Bureau (ADB) of Ukraine, at the time a socialist republic part of the USSR.
The Antonov An-225 Mriya (NATO designation “Cossack”) was a six-engine heavy lift cargo transport aircraft, a behemoth capable of carrying as much as 640 tones of cargo. ccWzPikpbK- Illia Ponomarenko February 27, 2022 The world’s greatest cargo aircraft, Ukraine’s Antonov An-225 Mriya, along with some other giant jets parked in Hostomel, was ruined amid a Russian attack at the Antonov Airfield.
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