Boosters Released

The Soyuz spacecraft carrying the three new space station crewmembers sheds its four boosters after blasting off on July 28.

For more than a decade, Shamil Zhumatov has photographed spacecraft taking off from Baikonur. After dozens of launches, he says the challenge is to find new and better ways of taking pictures. "Most launches lately have taken place in during the daytime, and this one was special, happening on the edge of day and night, about 20 minutes after sunset," Shamil said. It was already dark on the ground, but the upper layers of the atmosphere were still lit by sun. A few minutes into the flight, the rocket sheds its four boosters as they exhaust their liquid fuel and can no longer propel the craft. In daytime, they can be only seen as four tiny dots. But for this launch, because the unusual lighting made Soyuz's condensation trail very bright, it was easy to see the cross-shaped pattern formed by the discarded boosters.