Eerie photos show an abandoned Soviet spacecraft originally built for the Cold War

David de Rueda

The shuttles were once part of the USSR's plans to take the Cold War into space.

• Photographer David de Rueda has captured various abandoned Soviet spaces.
• His favorite place he's captured is a hangar in the steppe of Kazakhstan that holds two space shuttles from the USSR's once-active Buran program.
• The space shuttles have not been touched in nearly 30 years.

Photographer David de Rueda has never been afraid to venture into uncharted territory. His photography has made him explore abandoned radar stations, power plants, factories, and even two rarely seen relics of the Soviet space race.

The two shuttles, both a part of the Buran project (buran means blizzard in Russian), are located inside the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Once a part of the USSR's plans to take the Cold War into space, the shuttles were designed similarly to NASA's space shuttles, and meant for carrying cargo into space.

The shuttles have sat for nearly 30 years, untouched and left abandoned. When de Rueda first documented the hangars that house the shuttles back in 2015, he was mesmerized.

"The first trip was such an adventure, I didn't even imagine I'd do it again," he told Business Insider. "But almost a year later, I was back. This time, the plan was to explore a second hangar, housing Energia-M, a rocket test prototype. It meant we would spend more time on site."

Although this wasn't his first time going inside the hangars, de Rueda said it wasn't easier the second time around. "These abandoned structures are off-limits," he said.

Take a look at the eerie photos he captured below.