Soyuz and rocket rolled

Video from the channel NASA about Soyuz (cohete), linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 11:54. Language: English. Video type: News.

The NASA piece shows the rollout of the Soyuz rocket with its spacecraft to the launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, ready for the mission to the International Space Station, and includes two interviews. Joel Montalbano, deputy program manager for the station, and Mike Fossum, deputy chief of flight crew operations at Johnson Space Center, explain that the crew is veteran, with no rookies, and has trained for two and a half years.

The mission will carry the Olympic torch to the station, which will mean nine people in orbit for a time, something that had not happened in a long while. The plan calls for a same-day rendezvous with the station, as in recent Soyuz missions, and a quick spacewalk during which the torch will go outside before another crew brings it back to Earth. Montalbano compares the five Olympic rings to the five partner agencies: the Canadian, Japanese and European agencies, Roscosmos and NASA.

Launch, spacewalk and landing are packed into about three and a half days, with the torch spending five days aboard. For Fossum, the crew's experience is the key to fitting that schedule, and the torch symbolizes the station's international cooperation as Russia prepares to host the upcoming Games.