Graffiti Artists Defaced Soviet-Era Buran Space Shuttle At Russian Space Center

In the latest undignified episode in the unhappy recent history of the Soviet Union’s Buran space shuttle orbiter, one of the surviving examples was spray-painted by graffiti artists who managed to get into the building where it’s stored in Baikonur, Kazakhstan, home of the Russian space program. The episode has created embarrassment for the Russian state space corporation, Roscosmos, and comes less than a decade after the first Buran orbiter was totally destroyed in a roof collapse, also at Baikonur, which killed eight workers.

The recent graffiti incident saw several street artists infiltrate the assembly and refueling hall at Baikonur and spray various Cyrillic slogans across both sides of the rear fuselage of the orbiter. The intruders wrote the words “Good,” “Yura, we have arrived” (a reference to the first human in space, Yuri Gagarin), and “Before flying to the stars, a person needs to learn how to live on Earth.” They also added their signature tags, apparently revealing that a total of four individuals were involved.

An unnamed source within Roscosmos confirmed what had happened to state-run media outlet RIA Novosti, after one of the culprits had apparently taken to Instagram to explain how they had got into the facility, posting an account together with a photo and video and an accompanying statement: “I can say that, like Yura, I became the first.”

Leave a Comment