I doubt this is actually the Buran itself--there were a few Buran-class shuttles built to varying points of completion, as well as multiple mockups for aerodynamic tests and the like. The Buran was left in Kazakhstan, and it's unclear why they would haul an abandoned spacecraft all the way to the outskirts of Moscow.
This is most likely the fourth, unnamed Buran-class shuttle "2.02" which Wikipedia reports as "Partially dismantled, remains outside Tushino Machine Building Plant, near Moscow." Here's a picture of it in winter, apparently in a worse state of disrepair: http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/spacecraft/buran/2.02-2...
Its good information to know there were extra ships being built. I don't think its 2.02 though. These photos appear to be new, and the ship is in much better condition than the one that appears in the photo you shared, also as you noted. Unless for some reason these photos are actually much older than the one you found on aerospaceweb.
The condition of the shuttle is odd between the two photographs. Perhaps the windows were boarded up? Still, the location is most consistent with 2.02--there would be no reason to move any of the other shuttles from Kazakhstan to Moscow.
Sure not the Buran, since that one was crushed into chunks by the collapsed hangar roof on 12 May 2002 right in the middle of the long-postponed roof maintenance. (Annotated photos of the Energia/Buran ruins on the next day: http://www.buran.ru/htm/foto7.htm + aerial footage of the collapsed hangar: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNeVoRcQO40 )
Also Shuttle 2.01 very well known to be in that spot since 6-7 October 2004. That location is a kind of port/storage territory on the western shore of Khimkinskoe dam lake (aka Khimkinskoe Reservoir, Химкинское водохранилище) and theoretically belongs to Molniya Corporation (makers of the Buran).
Photos from the transportation day http://www.buran.ru/htm/2-01.htm + for comparison on the same page there are annotated interior views from circa year 2000 when 2.01 was stored inside a hangar at Molniya Corporation.
Back then in October 2004 this hauling of the Shuttle 2.01 was more or less covered by Russian press (e.g. http://www.gazeta.ru/2004/10/14/oa_136521.shtml) because just a 2 weeks before was an international media hype about .. "Soviet Space Shuttle Found In Bahrain" (http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/24/1314215) That vehicle appeared to be a Buran Analog testbed airplane (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OK-GLI) but also it wasn't exactly suddenly "found", more like sold in a shady manner by then-Marketing & Sales Director of Molniya Corporation while he was assuring the local press that the vehicle is only "rented for exhibitions". So moving the real shuttle out from the hangar couldn't pass unnoticed...
But it didn't help much. The situation with 2.01 ownership is now shady too, especially after all the persons behind the initial selling scheme had fled the company leaving no documentation behind. According to Vadim Lukashevich (buran.ru owner and dedicated author on the Soviet/Russian winged spacecrafts history for the Novosti Kosmonavtiki magazine) the vehicle now belongs to this pharmaceutical distribution company: http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/СИА_интернейшнл The same company recently filed a petition to initiate bankruptcy procedure of Molniya Corporation: http://www.pravo.ru/news/view/38472/
> and it's unclear why they would haul an abandoned spacecraft all the way to the outskirts of Moscow.
Btw the sad thing those "outskirts of Moscow" are actually a popular park/recreation area around the Khimkinsky dam lake. Also somewhere around 2000 a large part of the lakeside right across the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_River_Terminal was assigned for the Naval Museum. That's just ~1km from the port where the Shuttle 2.01 is stored:
A-90 Orlyonok ekranoplan on display at the Naval Museum
FWIW, the only flight that Buran performed was 100% automatic from launch to landing, with no crew on board, in 1988. It could have been an awesome machine.
The Buran was an imitation of the US Shuttle system, but the US Shuttle was not something worth imitating. Reusable launch vehicles have some advantages, but the Shuttles were not reusable in any reasonable sense. Had the Soviets dumped the development budget from Buran into building and launching stations with Energia while continuing to use Soyuz for crew ferrying and return they could have done some truly amazing things. Instead they made fundamentally the same mistake as the US, throwing away money on a horribly flawed system.
As we all know by now, the launch system has its flaws (segmented solids and loosely insulated liquid tanks). The economics of Shuttle was grotesquely oversold, and satellites were limited to LEO because that was the service ceiling for the platform. NASA never should have relied on Shuttle to do all its lifting; the back-breaker for the US Air Force was the launch delay during the Challenger investigation. Shouldn't have been using a man-rated vehicle to tow satellites into orbit to begin with.
But the orbiter itself is a work of art, a dazzlingly complex system, finely tuned to operate on the hairy edge of materials science and meticulously maintained. For all its expense, it was done right, and I rather wish there was the money to do it again with 21st century tech.
The Shuttle system was a triumph of technological marvel on top of technological marvel that even today deserves respect. Nevertheless, it was the wrong design for its mission, overcomplicated, expensive, and impractical. That it did fly is a testament to engineering savvy and determination. But it flew on the back of a standing army of aerospace engineers costing billions of dollars a year and upwards of half a billion dollars a flight. That aspect is not something to be proud of. The opportunity cost due to the Shuttle system in terms of things we could have done with the same money and resources is nothing short of breathtaking, and must be counted as a significant tragedy in the annals of manned spaceflight.
Consider that every single Shuttle flight (all 100 or so of them) ranks up there with a Saturn V launch in terms of expense, engineering, complexity, and hardware. Imagine where we would be today if instead of 100 Shuttle flights we had had 100 Saturn V launches.
The Shuttle design turned out to be deeply flawed in ways that prevented it from ever achieving a high flight rate (the only way to dramatically lower costs with a reusable vehicle) and was at best only quasi-reusable. Worse yet, it was burdened with requirements from the military which ended up not being used and took a heavy toll on the system's capabilities, robustness, and efficiency.
It's telling that of the many new clean-sheet designs for manned space vehicles the particular characteristics of the Shuttle are absent.
The Shuttle performed its primary mission of keeping the prestige of the US through the maintenance of an impressive looking manned spaceflight program. But in terms of advancing manned space exploration the Shuttle was a failure. And all of this is independent of the safety problems of the Shuttle system.
My heart still stirs when I see a Shuttle launch, but my head cannot help but see the terrible flaws of the program.
This is the kind of thing that Jacques Littlefield (RIP) could have rescued. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Littlefield I once visited his place. Believe me, 200 tanks, vehicles, and a SCUD missile on its launcher is a sight to behold. (Scud missiles were apparently hammered into shape with ball-peen hammers.)
If you look at the photos the craft looks like a solid piece of steal. The amazing effort, energy and engineering effort it took to get that into space. It's simply astonishing. Same applause to the Space Shuttle of course.
As many commenters on Slashdot have noted, this is most likely Shuttle 2.02 of the Buran program (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_program) and was never actually fully assembled.
This is most likely the fourth, unnamed Buran-class shuttle "2.02" which Wikipedia reports as "Partially dismantled, remains outside Tushino Machine Building Plant, near Moscow." Here's a picture of it in winter, apparently in a worse state of disrepair: http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/spacecraft/buran/2.02-2...
More information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuttle_2.02