The World - News from Oct. 28, 1988

A Soviet Foreign Ministry spokesman said the planned initial test launch of the nation’s space shuttle today will be televised live, the first live telecast of a Soviet space launch in two years. The countdown has already started for the maiden flight of the unmanned shuttle Buran, to be launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Soviet Central Asia. State television Wednesday showed the towering white shuttle, which closely resembles its U.S. counterpart, poised on its Energia booster rocket on the launch pad at the cosmodrome, the Soviet equivalent of Cape Canaveral. The Buran--snowstorm in Russian--has a slightly larger tail section than the American version but lacks an on-board engine.