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Russian rocket roll-out and raising revealed

Nice vid of Soyuz prepped for tomorrow's ISS resupply launch

The Russian space agency Roscosmos has released a nice video of the roll-out and raising of the Soyuz-2-1a launcher, which is poised to lift an unmanned supply vehicle to the International Space Station.

The Soyuz is due to depart Baikonur Cosmodrome tomorrow at 22:23 local time (16:23 GMT, 12:23 EDT), carrying a Progress MS-02 space truck, designated 63P for the 63rd Russian resupply mission to the orbiting outpost. NASA TV will have live coverage here.

Progress 63P during handling at Baikonur. Pic: RSC Energia

Space trucking: The Progress 63P at Baikonur

The vehicle – packing three tonnes of food, fuel and miscellaneous supplies for Expedition 47 – is due to dock with the aft port of the ISS's Zvezda Service Module on 2 April.

The Progress 61 currently occupying that parking space will be set loose today, ahead of a re-entry burn-up over the Pacific on 8 April.

The two-day rendezvous flight of Progress 63P will allow engineers to test out systems of the improved Progress MS line of spacecraft, which include an all-new "Unified Command and Telemetry System", plus an upgraded Kurs docking navigation system.* There are further details here.

The same improvements will be incorporated in the forthcoming Soyuz MS manned spacecraft, the first of which is due to slip the surly bonds of Earth in June. The Soyuz MS-01 mission will carry aloft commander Anatoli Ivanishin, Japan's Takuya Onishi, and NASA's Kathleen Rubins.

The last launch of the venerable Soyuz TMA line was TMA-20M, which departed Baikonur on 18 March, bearing 'nauts Alexei Ovchinin, Oleg Skripochka and Jeff Williams, plus a pink fluffy owl.

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Bootnote

*This will no doubt come as a great relief to grim-faced cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko, who back in December last year was obliged to manually dock the Soyuz TMA-19M spacecraft following a Kurs failure.

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