World’s largest Cargo Aircraft Antonov An-225 destroyed in Russian Attack

Context

The world’s largest cargo aircraft, the Antonov An-225, has been “destroyed” in an attack on its base at Hostomel/Gostomel airport in Ukraine.

About

About Antonov An-225:

The Antonov AN-225 Mriya is the largest aircraft in the world and is the only aircraft that features six turbofan engines.
Nicknamed the "Mriya" (meaning dream) was in commercial service since 2001.
Only one AN-225 was ever built to completion.
A second AN-225 began production in the late 1980s, but in 2009 when the aircraft had still not yet been completed, production was abandoned.
Technical features:
There are 20 steerable wheels in the 32-wheel landing gear.
The nose gear houses 4 steerable wheels and the other 16 are in the rear of the 18-wheel main gear.
The space shuttle that the AN-225 Mriya was originally tasked with transporting the space shuttle for the Soviet space program (the Buran spaceplane).
It made its international debut in absolute style by landing at the 1989 Paris Air Show with the shuttle on its back.

Indian landing:

It made its maiden landing in India in May 2016 at Hyderabad’s Shamshabad airport while en route to Perth to deliver a 117-tonne power generator (from Prague, the Czech Republic) to a mine in Australia.
It played an important role too in the COVID-19 fight, ferrying nearly 100 tonnes of medicines, laboratory kits, medical masks and personal protective equipment in various missions across Europe, Canada and to Africa.
It was even chartered to transport ‘Puma’ helicopters from Kabul to the U.K. after U.S. ended its mission in Afghanistan.

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