Welcome to the story of the biggest, largest and heaviest cargo plane ever built ANTONOV AN-225 a.k.a MRIYA.
ANTONOV-225 a.k.a MRIYA
The story begins at Ukraine's capital city "Kiev". Before 1991 Ukraine is a part of Soviet Union and " Kiev" Is the major industrial center in the Soviet Union. During that period Americans used their Boeing 747 Jumbo jets to carry their space shuttle "Endeavour".
This is when the Soviet also needed a massive plane which can helps them to transport their own space shuttle "Buran".
As the company ANTONOV design bureau used to come up with successful ideas for the Russian needs to transporting weapons and military equipment in Cold War period, Soviet Union approached ANTONOV for a plane to transport " Buran". By then, ANTONOV already built a largest military cargo plane AN-124 aka Ruslan. It took it's maiden flight on December, 1982.
An-124 (Ruslan)
In order to make a even more bigger plane than Ruslan, ANTONOV taken the design of Ruslan and made changes to it. They enlarged the body of Ruslan, replaced the tail with twin tail to make more space for the vehicles placed on the top and expanded the wingspan Accordingly. To make it easier to gain trust, they also added one additional engine at each wing. The final outcome is AN-225.
An-225 characteristics:
Length : 84 m
Height : 18.2 m
Wing span : 88.40 m
Wing area : 905.0 m²
Cruise speed: 800 km/h
Operational range: 15 400 m
Operational ceiling: 9 000 m
Objects as large as 11 meters in diameter and 76 meters long can fit inside an-225. It's loaded through its nose. The plane does not have any rear loading ramp or cargo door, both of which were removed to save weight. To load such heavy loads inside this aircraft is not an easy task. To make it easy, designers put a internal crane to lift and load the heavy materials and cargo. It gets power from six Ivchenko Progress Lotarev D-18T, three shaft turbofan engines, it can produce a maximum thrust of 229.5kN from each engine. A total of 32 tires with 7 wheel landing gears on each side helps in smooth landing and take off. The An-225 required 9000+ feet of tarmac or runway to take off and 11000+ feet of tarmac or runway to land with at least 200 feet wide.
This started in the mid of 1980s and the aircraft was first brought out on Dec 1st, 1988. It had been named "Mriya", which means "dream" in Ukrainian. "Mriya" taken it's 74 minutes maiden flight on the very same day and set 106 world records.
An-225 maiden flight
When An-225 successfully completed it's maiden flight, Soviet Union decided to build more such planes and started working on second An-225. But, unfortunately Soviet Union started collapsing. With this the primary purpose of building An-225 to transport Soviet Union space shuttles is vanished. Due to no funds received by ANTONOV not only they unable to continue the building of second An-225 but also they unable to operate An-225 for it's final certification test.
For almost 7 years "Mriya" was grounded due to lack of funds. Then, the company Antonov ran few tests and got the certification required for commercial use of An-225. May 1990 Mriya (captain Sergii Gorbik’s crew) makes its first commercial flight carrying a Т-800 tractor weighing over 110 tons from Chelyabinsk to Yakutia.
Again, in the year 2000 few more upgrades and modifications are made to make it much more better for commercial purpose.
To display the aircraft's capacity, on 11th September, 2001 a world record flight operation is performed by carrying 253 tons of cargo at an altitude of 10,500 meters. In this demonstration flight, "Mriya" broken 124 world records.
Since then, the massive cargo plane performed many crucial operations and transported tons of cargo to the places throughout the world. From commercial cargo to military cargo, "Mriya" is never an disappointment. In 2010, An-225 carried the longest cargo item in the history of air transportation. Two wind turbine blades 42.1 metres each were delivered by air from China to Denmark for special testing. Even in the recent covid times, "Mriya" transported tons of medical equipment, face shields, masks, PPE kits to various places and became a life savior.
It's been 34 years that this giant aircraft started roaming around the world. With regular checkups and maintenance, engineers of An-225 expected that this aircraft last for 50 years. Until, Russian missiles destroyed it.
In the war, Russia invasion of Ukraine on February, 2022. The second air attack launched by Russian army on Gostomel airport (home of An-225) destroyed "Mriya". Media organization Radio Liberty shared satellite images showing the aircraft in flames.
4 days after the An225 destroyed, media released the images of An225 remains. These images disturbed entire aviation industry.
According To Ukrainian State Defense Company Ukroboronprom, rebuilding the plane would take more than five years and costs more than $3 Billion.
This became an unexpected end of Mriya (The Dream).
1988-2022
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