|
Like other launches from the Russian-leased Baikonur cosmodrome in southern Kazakhstan, their mission followed a time-tested routine. After being meticulously fitted for their pressure suits just past midnight, the crew received a final message of encouragement from space officials, including the head of the Russian space agency. At the final salute before mounting the bus to the launching pad, a group of well-wishers greeted Walker with letters spelling out "Go Shannon!" Before the bus engines started up, Yurchikhin's young daughter, Yelena, was held aloft and kissed her father through the glass. At the pad, the astronauts sat, tightly bound into their seats in the rocket some two hours before the launch, while their family and colleagues anxiously waited at a viewing platform a little more than one kilometer away. Against the backdrop of the starkly dim steppe, lights on the gantry holding up the Soyuz rocket shimmered on the the launch pad known as Gagarin's Pad. It is the site from which the Soviet Union sent off Yuri Gagarin in 1961 to become the first human in space. In the hour before the launch, regular updates on the final preparations crackled out of speakers at the viewing platform. When the time came, the rocket roared to life and gradually lifted off the ground before darting off into the heavens, dramatically turning the sky a shade of phosphorous white. The three-person crew will join Russian commander Alexander Skvortskov, NASA flight engineer Tracy Caldwell Dyson and Russia's Mikhail Kornienko, who have been on the orbiting laboratory since April.
[Associated
Press;
Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
News | Sports | Business | Rural Review | Teaching & Learning | Home and Family | Tourism | Obituaries
Community |
Perspectives
|
Law & Courts |
Leisure Time
|
Spiritual Life |
Health & Fitness |
Teen Scene
Calendar
|
Letters to the Editor