On November 15, 1988, the Soviet Union launched its first spacecraft.

On November 15, 1988, at 6 a.m. Moscow time, the Soviet Union used the large-scale universal carrier rocket "Energy" at the Baikonur launch site to send the spacecraft "Snow Storm" into space.

The Soviet plan to develop a spacecraft began in the 1970s. It is that the way the Soviet Union developed a spacecraft was different from that of the United States. The Soviet Union first started by developing small spacecraft to verify its aerodynamic performance, flight characteristics, horizontal landing and heat-resistant erosion, and conducted several test flights. In recent years, Western newspapers have published images of Soviet spacecraft taken from satellites.

In October 1987, the Soviet Union held an international forum in Moscow, inviting hundreds of space engineers, scientists and astronauts from the United States and other countries to participate. At the conference, the Soviet Union revealed its space plane program to foreign representatives. Earlier this year, the head of the Soviet Space Agency¡¯s development and utilization of large-scale, practical space planes announced that the Soviet Union was in the ¡°final phase of testing.¡±

The "Snow Storm" spacecraft launched by the Soviet Union was unmanned and relyed entirely on an automated control system to fly and return to the ground. The Soviet "Truth" newspaper said in a report that achieving a complete automated landing was a difficult task. Because the landing of the spacecraft was more restricted than the ordinary aircraft. It did not have engine traction, but used the air-power principle of high speed, large slope, and consumed a lot of acceleration when rushing to the only landing place. Even a thousand miles away, it could not change the landing place. If the landing was inaccurate, it could not fly around the field again and land again.

The "Energy" carrier rocket is the latest high-power propeller in the Soviet Union and was first tested in May last year. It is to be reusable to send heavy scientific instruments into space. The Baikonur Space Center is located on the northern shore of the Sil River in Central Asia, the largest launch site in the Soviet Union, with a very long runway for space planes to land. The first artificial satellite of the Soviet Union was launched from here.

The purpose of the Soviet launch was to conduct comprehensive tests of the systems and structures of unmanned spacecraft entering orbit, flying and automatically returning to the ground, and to further practice carrying rockets and ground-controlled flight facilities.