French photographer and urban explorer Jonk finds himself drawn to abandoned places, but no previous venture was as high-stakes as the (unauthorised) trip he made into the Baikonur Cosmodrome. This enclave inside Kazakhstan is where Russia continues to run the space programme that began under the USSR. Away from the current launch sites, and visited by occasional patrols, are a series of rusting hangars that contain the relics of a venture barely known to the outside world: the Soviet attempt to mirror the US Space Shuttle. Only one Buran (‘Snowstorm’) spaceplane ever made it into orbit, on a test flight in 1988, before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 led to the cancellation of that programme. But two other Buran prototypes still lie in their hangar, picked at by scrap-metal thieves, with Soviet-era manuals littered around. Jonk and his helpers hiked into the exclusion zone under darkness and watched for patrols as they camped out in the derelict buildings. The resulting book is now in print. Baikonur: Vestiges of the Soviet Space Programme is a rare photo record of a future that could have been. Find out more at jonk-photography.com