the AN-225 was designed to be part of the Soviet space program. A new era in space exploration began in April 1981, when the first Space Shuttle launched into orbit from NASA’s Kennedy Space ...

The An-225 made its international debut in a style befitting its dimensions: by landing at the 1989 Paris Air Show with the Buran space shuttle on its back. Eight months earlier, on Nov. 15 ...

And what happened to the An-225 that led to its destruction ... the USSR's fledgling space shuttle program that did not survive the fall of the Iron Curtain. The U.S. used two modified 747s ...

The An-124 was actually the precursor to the An-225, which was built at the request of the USSR to carry its Busan Space Shuttle. A quick turnaround time required by the Soviets meant it was more ...

In order to transport the Soviet Union’s two Buran space gliders, Antonov built a derivative of the An-124 military transport, the An-225. It was built to carry a Buran shuttle piggyback style ...

The Space Shuttle we wound up with was a hybrid and ... more than twice that of the doomed Antonov AN-225 Mriya. While this whole idea seems increasingly insane on the surface, the idea of ...

It measured 275 feet long and weighed nearly 420,000 pounds, designed to piggyback the USSR's Buran space shuttle much the same way NASA plopped its shuttles on top of a modified 747. After the ...

Plans were well underway to launch the Space Shuttle at Vandenberg in the early 1980s. The shuttle was what a rocket could never be: A flying aircraft with a human pilot. The insulting phrase for ...