Russian Soyuz spacecraft blasts off on station flight

http://www.timesofearth.com/Technology/?NT=2&nid=20174 BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan — A Russian space ship blasted off from Kazakhstan on Friday, transporting a Nasa astronaut and two cosmonauts to the International Space Station.


The crew, made up of American Tracy Caldwell Dyson and Russians Alexander Skvortsov and Mikhail Kornienko, will spend six months in orbit around Earth.


The Soyuz craft rose from the Baikonur cosmodrome on schedule at 0404 (GMT), thundering through a clear blue sky at more than 8,000 miles per hour. It was launched amid tightened security following two suicide attacks on the Moscow metro.

Live pictures broadcast from the craft showed Mr Skvortsov smiling as a toy duck nicknamed 'Quack' dangled overhead. Once the craft entered orbit, the fluffy talisman began to float, demonstrating zero gravity.


'The vehicle is performing fine,' Mr Skvortsov said after a long communications disruption due to static.


The same launch pad was used by Yuri Gagarin when he made the first human trip into orbit in 1961


After docking with the multinational orbiter on Easter Sunday, they will join Russian Expedition 23 commander Oleg Kotov, Japanese flight engineer Soichi Noguchi and U.S. flight engineer Timothy Creamer.

One of the experiments on board the station will investigate why the absence of gravity suppresses the human immune system.

Since the Apollo moon programme, scientists have noted that zero-gravity can stop T cells from functioning - cells that our bodies need to fight disease.


They hope experiments with mice will reveal the root cause of this and pave the way for new immune boosting treatments on Earth.


Their missions ends in September, just before the U.S.'s last-ever shuttle flight launches from the Kennedy Space Center. From then on Russia will ferry crews to the station on single-use Soyuz spaceships.

A U.S. space shuttle is scheduled to head to the space station next week. Discovery is set to launch on Monday for a 13-day mission to add several tons of research equipment to the orbiting laboratory.

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[centurion180ad]

@SuperCrazyJunk Russian manned rockets look cooler than American ones, because they are not rigged to fucking explode to scatter bits of over a dozen astronauts across the planet.

[centurion180ad]

TV announcers are universally loathsome creatures, and spoil the video.

I wouldn’t mind hearing the communication between Soyuz launch center, the pad crew, and cosmonauts. This particular bastard does not bother to pronounce his “T”s in the word inTernaTional.

[Crawlerz2468]

@ADKIc3mAnX36O holy fuck man! the capsule comes back, not the rocket. it seperates ofc.

[ADKIc3mAnX36O]

Wait one question how the hell does that Rocket come back to Earth ?

[SuperCrazyJunk]

russian rockets look so much cooler than the American ones

[Deathwish026]

gosh it takes some kick to move that thing lol. bring on the anti matter engines!!!