Explorers broke into a Russian military base and found the ruins of a space shuttle. In May 2017, a team of intrepid explorers traveled to a remote Cold War spaceport where they made an exhilarating discovery. A decaying icon of space-age technology apparently abandoned in a vast and dilapidated hangar, and thanks to their nifty drone, they were able to capture incredible footage of it before the authorities could discover them. The team in question included several urban explorers from Europe, Bob, Frederick, Jan and Morton. With a decades worth of experience inspecting abandoned buildings and around the world behind them, the team have published videos of their adventures on a YouTube channel called Exploring the Unbeaten Path, an app name as Few Places are as off the beaten track as Burrall Kazakhstan, where the spaceport was located. Moreover, the spaceport was not entirely abandoned, meaning that security personnel could apprehend them in any moment. Undeterred by the possibility of spending time in a cosmic jail, though, the team went ahead with their mission, and the footage they obtained proves the old maxim that high risk brings higher rewards. Their journey to the spaceport involved several days of travel through some spectacularly remote and hazardous terrain. Bordering the nations of Russia, China, Kyrzicekstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, landlocked Kazakhstan is home to the Earth's largest dry-step region, the Kazakhstan, which covers one-third of the country. Somewhere in this forbidding landscape, then, was the explorer's destination. The Kazakhstan step is a vast, arid and inhospitable expanse of grasslands and savannas, but owing to the fact that the area is sparsely populated, it makes an ideal setting for a secret spaceport. Not only does the wide open terrain provide an abundance of hard-to-reach hiding places, but it's also perfect for the reception of radio communications from outer space. The spaceport was, in fact, established by Soviet decree in 1955, known as the Bikener Cosmodron. The site was actually the world's very first space launch facility, and what's more, measuring by 53 miles north-south and 56 miles east-west, the spaceport is an extremely large complex, incorporating the world's largest industrial railway and two airports. Today, Bikener is at least to the Russian Federation by the government of Kazakhstan, and it retains a mixture of abandoned and working facilities. In fact, ever since the US Space Shuttle program was shut down in 2011, Bikener has had a monopoly on missions to the International Space Station. The complex, therefore, remains the world's largest operational spaceport. Of course, this means that the site is also heavily guarded, and, as the explorers approached it from distance, they became increasingly uneasy. First, they saw a car with its lights on in the desert, then they heard three gunshots, and we had no clue what was going on. They said in their YouTube video, proceeding with extreme caution, they covered the final stretch on foot. This proved to be a sensible decision, too, as they soon encountered booby traps in the form of metal spikes protruding from the ground. After all, the last thing you need in the Kazakhstan staff is a flat tire. The explorers arrived at Bikener under the cover of darkness, then, recording their exploits with an infrared camera, they scrambled over a high wall and slipped inside a hangar, and before turning in for the night, exhausted, they caught sight of their prize. A retired Soviet space vehicle, rarely seen firsthand. It's the third bad night we had. I look like a zombie, said Bob, but I don't care because there's nothing better than waking up to this. Indeed, the site of a decaying, brand space shuttle parked below must have made their morning. Developed as a rival to the US space shuttle, the baran shuttle, whose name translates as Snowstorm, was a key component of the Soviet space program during the mid 1970s. And like the US space shuttle, it was designed to perform multiple trips to space. In fact, the baran shuttle was superior to its US counterpart in several ways. For example, its payload capacity was 5 tons greater than its American equivalents, but despite its technological strengths, it was almost never used. Indeed, the baran completed its first and only orbital flight on November 15, 1988. You see, due to a lack of financial resources, the Pollock Bureau was forced to suspend the baran program shortly after works. The project was officially retired in 1993, two years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and it left behind several shuttles in various states of completion, two of which were disassembled in 1995. Unfortunately, the only baran with flight experience was destroyed by a falling roof in 2002, leaving just two surviving craft, a prototype and a test model. Today, these precious vehicles are slowly decaying and hangers at Bikin or Cosmodrome, a testament to the never realized ambitions of the Soviet space program. But despite the failure of baran, the behemoth spaceport can claim a number of historic successes. October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched the world's first satellite from Bikin or, dispatched to a low Earth orbit, Spotnik I, broadcast radio pulses to Earth for 21 days until its batteries ran out. And so, the space race officially began. Meanwhile, as the United States scrambled to develop its own space program, the Soviet Union continued to wreck up accomplishments thanks to its launch facilities at Bikin or. On April 12, 1961, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin made history as the first man in space. Then in 1963, Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman to achieve that feat. Today, the future of the spaceport is uncertain. In 2004, Kazakhstan and Russia entered into a joint venture to develop a new launch complex at Bikin or for Russian and Garou Rockets. And while the project stalled in 2010 due to lack of funds, Kazakhstan still hopes that the first rocket will blast off in 2025. Russia, meanwhile, has begun constructing a new and alternative $3 billion space complex in Siberia. Of course, Bikin or is a site of exceptional historic significance, meaning huge potential for tourist development. Indeed, there's already a small museum at the site. However, the logistical difficulty of getting to the Kazakhstan step makes it a place of limited appeal and, quite possibly, the entire complex may fall into ruin one day. Fortunately, however, as long as there are abandoned Soviet facilities, there will always be daring urban explorers who want to document them. And thanks to one team and their aerial drone, which performs beautifully within the hangar's vast interior, we're able to see one such facility up close.