TomTom WORK tracks Russian Spacecraft

[Darren]

Not as mad as it sounds! Buran was Russia's answer to the US Space Shuttle, so similar in fact that it could almost have been copied, surely not! In truth it was a better design, with greater lift capability but lack of funding meant it never made it into service outside of test flights within the atmosphere using temporarily fitted jet engine pods.

The only surviving spacecraft, Buran 02, a 100 ton behemoth, is making its way to the Technik Museum Speyer near Frankfurt and TomTom WORK is being used to track its progress Heavy haulage company Spedition Kuebler GmbH is transporting the spacecraft using a mixture of barge and heavy haulage vehicles and you can track its progress in real time on line here.

The TomTom WORK solution comprises a TomTom LINK box connected to a GO910 GPS navigation unit. This equipment is able to feed information about the spacecraft's location through TomTom WEBFLEET, the on line management and reporting tool of TomTom WORK.

Jeremy Gould, UK Sales Manager for TomTom WORK, said: "We are delighted that Spedition Kuebler is using our connected navigation system to monitor the movement of this amazing machine. In its day this was state-of-the-art technology and it is great that TomTom's own state-of-the-art technology is playing such an important part in this, its final journey."
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Darren Griffin

[LostAtSea]

Not to nit pick, and irrelevent to GPS, but Buran did make it into space, once :

http://www.astronautix.com/craft/buran.htm

"Buran, with a mass of 79.4 metric tons, separated from the Block Ts core and entered a temporary orbit with a perigee of -11.2 km and apogee of 154.2 km. At apogee Burn executed a 66.6 m/s maneuver and entered a 251 km x 263 km orbit of the earth. In the payload bay was the 7150 kg module 37KB s/n 37071. 140 minutes into the flight retrofire was accomplished with a total delta-v of 175 m/s. 206 minutes after launch, accompanied by Igor Volk in a MiG-25 chase plane, Buran touched down at 260 km/hr in a 17 m/s crosswind at the Jubilee runway, with a 1620 m landing rollout. The completely automatic launch, orbital maneuver, deorbit, and precision landing of an airliner-sized spaceplane on its very first flight was an unprecedented accomplishment of which the Soviets were justifiably proud."

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