In a dusty hangar on the steppes of Kazakhstan, one of the last remnants of the Cold War space race, the Soviet space shuttle, lies forgotten.
The cosmos was a field of fierce competition for the United States and USSR, which constantly sought to one-up each other with new technological breakthroughs and pioneering missions.
Part of that rivalry is still hidden away at the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the starting point for Soviet and Russian space flights before the new Vostochny cosmodrome was built.
The first Soviet space shuttle, which made just one unmanned flight, was destroyed in 2002 when the hangar housing it collapsed, but a second shuttle and test mockup are still intact as…