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In case you missed it...
In the hour counting down to the Soyuz launch (which occurred at 0859 GMT, or about 4 am Central time), the control room in Houston was able to get a feed from the Moscow TsUP (what everyone calls the mission control center there; pronounced "tsoup"). That feed had, in turn, had been provided to the Russians by the French space agency (CNES).
The French are taking an interest in this flight because astronaut Claudie Haigneré - who became the first Frenchwoman in space in 1996 - is flying on board the TM-33 as a flight engineer, the first time (say the newsies) a non-Russian woman has served in that capacity.
(Does anyone really care about such distinctions? Thinking back to some baseball color commentary I've heard, I wonder if we'll eventually be treated to such choice distinctions as: "X is the first left-handed, red-headed Uruguayan who has a Ph.D. in cognitive science from the Sorbonne to fly as a payload specialist on an odd-numbered Shuttle mission." But I digress...)
In case you happened to be sound asleep at 4 am Central time, or didn't have your television tuned to whatever channel was broadcasting round-the-clock coverage of space-related events, here's what the Soyuz looked like on my TV monitor a few minutes prior to launch:
This next shot, taken a few sections prior to liftoff, shows the gantries retracted (this occurs in the last minute of the countdown) and a glow coming from the launch vehicle's ignited engines:
A few seconds after launch, the vehicle is all but lost to view (and staring at a diminishing point of light is no fun at all), so the television feed transferred to the interior of the Soyuz. In this next image, we see Haigneré at the top of the screen and pilot Konstantin Kozeiev at the bottom of the screen. (The third crew member, vehicle commander Viktor Afanasiev - call sign "Derbent" - is seated to Kozeiev's right, "below" the screen.) The red and green smudge in the middle is one of those doodads with an oversize red die and green thingamajingle that some people like to hang from the rear-view mirror of their car (and others, from some handy hook in their space vehicle).
We now return you to your regularly scheduled LiveJournal...
Cheers...
P.S. This would've been posted last night, but the database upgrade got in the way. Bleah.
The French are taking an interest in this flight because astronaut Claudie Haigneré - who became the first Frenchwoman in space in 1996 - is flying on board the TM-33 as a flight engineer, the first time (say the newsies) a non-Russian woman has served in that capacity.
(Does anyone really care about such distinctions? Thinking back to some baseball color commentary I've heard, I wonder if we'll eventually be treated to such choice distinctions as: "X is the first left-handed, red-headed Uruguayan who has a Ph.D. in cognitive science from the Sorbonne to fly as a payload specialist on an odd-numbered Shuttle mission." But I digress...)
In case you happened to be sound asleep at 4 am Central time, or didn't have your television tuned to whatever channel was broadcasting round-the-clock coverage of space-related events, here's what the Soyuz looked like on my TV monitor a few minutes prior to launch:
This next shot, taken a few sections prior to liftoff, shows the gantries retracted (this occurs in the last minute of the countdown) and a glow coming from the launch vehicle's ignited engines:
A few seconds after launch, the vehicle is all but lost to view (and staring at a diminishing point of light is no fun at all), so the television feed transferred to the interior of the Soyuz. In this next image, we see Haigneré at the top of the screen and pilot Konstantin Kozeiev at the bottom of the screen. (The third crew member, vehicle commander Viktor Afanasiev - call sign "Derbent" - is seated to Kozeiev's right, "below" the screen.) The red and green smudge in the middle is one of those doodads with an oversize red die and green thingamajingle that some people like to hang from the rear-view mirror of their car (and others, from some handy hook in their space vehicle).
We now return you to your regularly scheduled LiveJournal...
Cheers...
P.S. This would've been posted last night, but the database upgrade got in the way. Bleah.