Tim's Blog

Images from launch of Soyuz TMA-17

Monday, 21 December 2009 21:51

Yesterday, at 21:52 UTC I had the pleasure of watching the Soyuz TMA-17 spacecraft lauch from Baikonour Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.  This is the first time I have watched a Soyuz launch.  It is also the second time I have watched a space craft launch via the streaming video feed offered by NASA TV.  To cap it all off, later that night my eldest son and I watched the International Space Station fly by.  To make the night complete we also caught sight of a shooting star.

It was quite an exciting day for me, as far as space travel goes.

While watching the launch I made a few screen grabs with my SnagIt "camera".  They may not be the best quality (there are loads of high-resolution pictures around the 'net), but they are the only ones I could take (given my Olympus just doesn't have that kind of range).

Lastly, I spent some time looking around for Soyuz TMA-17 flight path information as I was hoping to see it also.  I eventually came across a Java applet at the Russian Mission Control Centre that gave tracking information here.  After some playing around I discovered that it could display other things too, so I setup my own tracking page that enables these here.

Links

The following are a collection of links related to the Soyuz TMA-17 mission.

• Astronauts TJ Creamer (@Astro_TJ) and Soichi Noguchi (@Astro_Soichi) are on Twitter.  All tweets by astronauts are retweeted by @NASA_Astronauts.
• The Expedition 22 mission page at NASA.
• Wikipedia entries for TMA-17, Expedition 22 and the Soyuz spacecraft.

Acknowlegements

I would like to thank NASA and the Russian Federal Space Agency for their live coverage via NASA TV.  Space enthusiasts are scattered all over the world and while all the noise is usually made in Florida or Baikonour, NASA TV ensures that the rest of the world can hear and see it when it happens.