Mighty Soyuz stands proud at Baikonur

The Soyuz TMA-20M which will tomorrow transport 'nauts Jeff Williams, Oleg Skripochka and Alexei Ovchinin to the International Space Station is standing ready to roll on launch pad 1 at Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

As is the Russian custom, the lifter was prepared in a horizontal position*, trundled to the pad and finally hoisted vertical yesterday:

Big version available here. Pic: NASA / Aubrey Gemignani

For embiggenment see here. Pic: NASA / Aubrey Gemignani

The Soyuz is scheduled to blast off at 21:26 GMT tomorrow, and you can follow the action live from 20:30 GMT down at NASA TV.

Ovchinin, Skripochka and Williams will join current ISS residents Tim Kopra, Yuri Malenchenko and Tim Peake to form Expedition 47.

To get an idea of just how mighty the Soyuz is, here are (L-R) Peake, Malenchenko and Kopra posing in front of the business end of the TMA-19M which delivered them to the orbiting outpost on 15 December last year:

Blimey. Pic: NASA / Victor Zelentsov

If you're wondering about Malenchenko's grim-faced demeanour, he's always like that, but since he's tasked with manually docking capsules with the ISS in the event of automatic rendezvous system failure, that's hardly surprising. ®

Bootnote

*Another example from Baikonur is this fine snap of the Proton-M which recently send the ExoMars mission on its way to the Red Planet:

Reclining Russian rocket. Pic: KhSC

Horizontal assembly of rockets is simpler than having to stack everything vertically. The parts are easier to access, too, when the thing's lying on the ground. Europe will adopt the Russian system for the Ariane 6.