The paralells between the American and Soviet space programs in 1967 to 1968 are quite strange. On January 27th 1967 America had the Apollo 1 Fire which resulted in the delay of the first manned flight of Apollo until October 1968 and the Apollo 7 Mission. The Soviet Union had a similarly bad situation with […]
Here we have an interesting clip of the initial launch and ascent of the failed Soyuz MS-10 launch on Thursday, October 11th. This footage looks to have been taken from a drone flying a few hundred feet away, and is indeed good quality, albeit still a “from the ground” view. The video seems to end […]
I certainly wasn’t expecting to wake up to this bit of news, but it’s a statistical probability – this morning Soyuz MS-10 launch ended about 2 minutes into flight with an abort after some kind of anomaly with the Soyuz booster. As of right now, the news is spotty, but the good news is the […]
In what I think is going to become a trend here, it’s time to share a video of the rollout of Soyuz MS-10 to its launch pad at Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, a vehicle set to launch just a few hours from now as I write this entry. I’ve mentioned before that I love the […]
October 4th is one of my favorite days of the year for one awesome reason – it’s the day in 1958 where the Soviet Union successfully orbited the worlds first satellite – Sputnik 1. The first in a string of amazing achievements for humanity (not just on a national level) and our first steps out […]
The Russian cargo vehicle Progress MS-09 launched on July 9th 2018 carrying approximately 2400 kilograms of supplies for the International Space Station. A pretty typical resupply mission save for two interesting facts: 1: This mission was launched at such a time that it could dock faster than any previous mission to the ISS, spending a […]
I’m only a month behind on covering this one, but I thought it might be nice with the recent sharing of the rollout of Progress MS-09 to share the launch and docking of Soyuz MS-09, since I missed covering it on time last month. Soyuz MS-09 launched on June 6th, 2018, carrying Sergey Prokopyev, Alexander […]
Earlier today on March 21st, 2018 Soyuz MS-08 launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan carrying a new crew of 3, Oleg Artemyev, Andrew J. Feustel, and Richard R. Arnold, to the International Space Station. The Soyuz spacecraft is taking the 2 day route, as opposed to the 6 hour rendezvous and docking method used during optimal […]
A few days ago, Soyuz MS-05 made a safe landing back on Earth, freeing up space on the station for the Expedition 54-55 crew of Anton Shkaplerov, Scott Tingle, and Norishige Kanai. This was an early morning launch here in the US, but it was mid-day at Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan – the perfect time […]
In what seems so far to be a flawless mission, Soyuz MS-05 made a successful docking with the Rassvet module of the International Space Station slightly ahead of schedule, a little before 6 hours after its launch on the 28th. The images of the docking are quite beautiful – the below video shows views from […]
While I’m quite apt to cover launches of missions to the International Space Station, I often times don’t address the fact that 6 months later the Space Station crews return home in the Soyuz craft that took them up there to begin with. Today, the crew of Expedition 51, Peggy Whitson, Oleg Novitskiy and Thomas […]
On April 23rd, 1967, the Soviet Union launched the first manned mission of their new Soyuz program. The Soviets had not launched a crew in 2 years, realizing that to get anywhere close to beating the Americans at a race to the moon they would need to produce a new spacecraft that could conduct a […]
February 22nd, 2017 marked the end of an era: after 43 years, the final Soyuz-U vehicle launched from Pad 1/5, or “Gagarins Start” at Baikonour Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, sending the Progress 66 (Internally known as Progress MS-05) supply vehicle to the International Space Station. The Soyuz-U Booster variant is the most flown rocket configuration in history, […]
Today has really been a space heavy day for me, hasn’t it? Today marks the successful launch of Soyuz MS-03, sending another 3 person crew, Oleg Novitskiy, Peggy Whitson, and Thomas Pesquet, to the International Space Station. I don’t have much commentary: not that Soyuz launches are boring (far from it) but there really isn’t […]
What rocket launch article on Xadara would be complete without a companion article on the launch replays? In this case, as mentioned in the last article we have a beautiful day launch of the Soyuz booster and the MS-02 spacecraft. This booster didn’t launch from “Gagarin’s Start,” the normal pad that most Russian manned flights […]