An interesting Soviet space shuttle on a coin from its home country (which isn’t Russia)

Reverse

The reverse of the 2014 50 Tenge coin is dominated by a space shuttle on a rocket booster, heading to orbit around Earth, with the moon in the background. The space shuttle is not one of the well-known American shuttles, but rather the Soviet shuttle, Buran. Not just a “copy” of the US shuttles, a very capable machine in its own right. Although it only flew once, it set a Guiness World Record for the “Largest spacecraft to orbit and land unmanned” on that flight. Buran launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, the main Soviet launching site, in what is today, Kazakhstan.

This coin is a non-circulating coin. Although Buran features on coins from a number of mainly ex-soviet countries, they are all non-circulating commemoratives. The only two coins to feature a shuttle are both from the United States of America. The 2004 Florida quarter (from the 50 state quarters series), features a space shuttle coming in to land, a nod to Cape Canaveral, the main US launch site for space missions. The 2022 “Dr Sally Ride” quarter (from the American Women quarters program) features the astronaut Dr Sally Ride, looking out a window of the space shuttle. Flying on STS-7 and STS-41G, both on the shuttle Challenger.

Obverse

Kazakhstan is the largest landlocked country in the world, and the ninth largest country by area, although with only 20 million inhabitants, it is the 62nd largest country by population. Kazakhstan have produced a number of interesting non-circulating coin series, from Ancient coins, cult animals, artists of Kazakhstan and more.

This coin is part of Kazakhstan’s “Space” series, featuring no less than 26 coins from 2006-2021. The obverse of the coin features a design called “Unity of a man and the universe, bonds of past and present”. The design is remeniscent of a striped planet with a ring of asteroids around it. The silhouette of a person straddles the edge of the planet, reaching up.