An Orthodox priest blesses the cosmonauts before the flight
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Cosmonauts Kevin Ford, Oleg Novitsky, and Yevgeni Tarelkin
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The priest blessing the spacecraft spritzes the photographer! Now, that’s Russian Orthodoxy…
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The mission is readied for launching
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Lift off! Ura! Isn’t it odd how the arrogant and tight-arsed Americans have to bum rides with us backward and retrograde Russians? You’d think that all of their boasts are hubristical lies! Hmm… one hopes that the Russian crew taught the American how to go “na troikh” (“three on a bottle”)… there are three of them, after all…
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The Soyuz TMA-06M was launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome with a new ISS crew. Cosmonauts Oleg Novitsky (Roscosmos), Yevgeni Tarelkin (Roscosmos), and Kevin Ford (NASA) went to into near-Earth orbit. The docking of the Soyuz with the ISS happened on 25 October. For Russians Novitsky and Tarelkin, it’s the first flight into space, whilst Ford is on his second mission. The new crew shall stay at the ISS for 148 days. They will unload four Progress transport craft and one European ATV-4 craft. The crew of the 33rd expedition doesn’t plan to have any spacewalks.
24 October 2012
English Russia
http://englishrussia.com/2012/10/24/the-new-crew-is-about-to-come-to-the-iss/#more-112615
13 June 2012. Sergei Yolkin’s World. A Thorny Path to the Stars
Tags: Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, political commentary, politics, Roskosmos, Russia, Russian, space, space exploration
A Thorny Path to the Stars
Sergei Yolkin
2012
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Official Kazakh sources released the 2011-15 strategic plan of the Kazakh National Space Agency; it estimates that, given normal wear and tear, the equipment at the Russian-leased Baikonur Cosmodrome has ten more years of useful life.
13 June 2012
Sergei Yolkin
Voice of Russia World Service
http://ria.ru/caricature/20120613/672313572.html