Bill Ingalls/NASA

Stephanie Stoll/NASA

Stephanie Stoll/NASA

Stephanie Stoll/NASA

Alexander Vysotsky/NASA

Alexander Vysotsky/NASA

Alexander Vysotsky/NASA

Alexander Vysotsky/NASA

Alexander Vysotsky/NASA

Alexander Vysotsky/NASA

Alexander Vysotsky/NASA

Alexander Vysotsky/NASA

Alexander Vysotsky/NASA

Alexander Vysotsky/NASA

Andrei Shelepin/NASA



Perhaps it's the bleak, Soviet-style block apartments. It could be the dust-blown, almost featureless landscape. Or maybe it's the scraggly trees that eke out their meager existence in Baikonur, with their lower trunks painted white so the bark does not crack during the bitter winter freezes. This lonely town in southern Kazakhstan is not one of planet Earth's garden spots.

As they began to build a spaceport to launch first satellites and then humans into space, the Soviets chose this desolate area of the Asian steppe in the 1950s both for its remoteness and its access to the Syr Darya River. Amusingly, "Baikonur" means “rich soil,” an appellation that was true for the original Baikonur hundreds of kilometers to the north. To throw off American spies looking for its launch facilities during the Cold War, the Soviet Union built a fake launch site at the real town of Baikonur. Eventually, spy planes observed the southern site and its launches, so the Soviets simply called the new site Baikonur as well.

In the post-Space Shuttle world this camel-trafficked region serves as the launch site for all Russian and US human spaceflights from the very same pad that Yuri Gagarin blasted off of in 1961. On Wednesday, at 9:36pm ET, the latest launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome will carry Expedition 48—Soyuz commander Anatoly Ivanishin of Roscosmos, and engineers Takuya Onishi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and Kate Rubins of NASA—into space. They will spend about six months on board the International Space Station.

Until SpaceX and Boeing begin flying their Dragon and Starliner commercial spacecraft into space from Florida in late 2017 or 2018, America's road to orbit goes through Russia. And while the relationship between the US and Russian space programs has warmed considerably during the last three decades, the traditions in Baikonur have not changed much.

The routine goes something like this: about two weeks before launch, the primary and backup crews for the flight leave the Star City cosmonaut training compound outside of Moscow and take a private flight to Baikonur. There they spend the last days before their mission undergoing final training and tests, waiting for their rocket roll out of the hangar down train tracks to the launch pad. They plant trees and idle in the Cosmonaut Hotel, which backs up to the Syr Darya River. It can be a mundane experience, halfway around the world from home, but for now it is the only way for NASA astronauts to get to the International Space Station.

The interesting bit for Wednesday evening's launch, which will occur on Thursday morning in Baikonur, will be the use of an enhanced Soyuz spacecraft. The Soyuz has now flown nearly 130 times since the first crewed mission in 1968, but the newest version, the Soyuz MS, has received several upgrades. These include improved thrusters, additional micrometeoroid debris shielding, increased power from more photovoltaic cells on the spacecraft’s solar arrays, and improved docking capabilities.

However, because these new systems will need to be tested once in space, the Soyuz will not make a "fast" six-hour rendezvous with the space station. Instead the crew will make 34 orbits over the course of about two days before docking. It will be a tight fit for three people inside the Soyuz capsule and its small orbital module, but perhaps not the worst of experiences after long days of waiting on the Asian steppe.