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Will the last cosmonaut to cast turn off the lights
Launch of the Soyuz TMA-04M since the beginning of Gagarin, Baikonur, 2012 (Nostalgia for Infinity / Shutterstock)
Russia bade farewell to the old "departure of Gagarin" yesterday, as the last Soyuz-FG launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome platform in Kazakhstan headed for the International Space Station (ISS).
After seeing the last trio of ISS occupants leave Earth safely, "Site 1" will be the subject of substantial modernization in anticipation of the upcoming Soyuz 2 launches.
This facility, which was built in the late 1950s to test the intercontinental ballistic missile R-7, marks the end of an era. The first R-7 was launched on May 15, 1957, and the Soviet Union continued this operation by launching Sputnik 1 into orbit from the platform on October 4, 1957.
The venerable launch pad of the Baikonur cosmodrome also saw Vostok 1 climb for the first time into orbit (Yuri Gagarin) on April 12, 1961, followed by the vast majority of crewed space flights in the Soviet and Russian programs, as well as astronauts from NASA.
In total, the site has launched more than 500 rockets, the latest being the Soyuz MS-15 spacecraft currently docked at the ISS.
Last April, RIA Novosti, an orchestra of Russian news, had indicated that the lack of financial means prevented modernization and that the future of the facility would be questioned. A disturbing development for those who remember the fate of the only Buran to go into orbit.
Yesterday's show from Roscomos however indicates that a little something has been discovered behind the couch to finance the future.
The next meat mission in the ISS will be the Soyuz MS-16 site 31 at Baikonur, at the summit of a Soyuz-2, after the success of the unarmed Soyuz demonstration mission. The MS-16 is remarkable because, at the time of writing this article, it is composed of two Russian crew members and a member of the Japanese space agency JAXA. NASA desperately hopes that its commercial comrades, Boeing and SpaceX, will have their talents back by 2020.
As for the Soyuz MS-15, the last Soyuz-FG flight to leave the Gagarin departure took off at 13:57 UTC yesterday and docked at the ISS just under six hours later. In addition to the crew, he also transported 180 kg of cargo to the outpost. The arrival brings to nine the number of occupants of the ISS until leaving Soyuz MS-12, currently scheduled for October. ®
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