The Buran programme ("Blizzard") was a Soviet and later Russian reusable spacecraft project that began in 1974 at the Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute and was formally suspended in 1993. In addition to being the designation for the whole Soviet/Russian reusable spacecraft project, Buran was also the name given to Orbiter K1, which completed one unmanned spaceflight in 1988 and was the only Soviet reusable spacecraft to be launched into space. The Buranclass space shuttle orbiters used the expendable Energia rocket as a launch vehicle. They are generally treated as a Soviet equivalent of the United States' Space Shuttle but in the Buran project, only the airplaneshaped orbiter itself was theoretically reusable, and while Orbiter K1 was recovered successfully after its first orbital flight in 1988, it was never reused.