<\/figure>\n<\/p>\nYou could be forgiven for thinking that this dramatic image is a still from a forthcoming science fiction epic, but it is actually the work of photographer Andrew McConnell, part of his in-depth series Some Worlds Have Two Suns<\/i> \u2013 and it is very much of this planet.<\/p>\n
McConnell began documenting the movements of Russian Soyuz rockets in 2015. Every three months, a spacecraft takes off from Baikonur Cosmodrome, a spaceport in Kazakhstan, carrying three astronauts and cosmonauts on a 6-hour journey to the International Space Station. At roughly the same time, three space travellers come back to Earth, landing in the remote grasslands to Kazakhstan\u2019s north-east.<\/p>\n
This remarkable photograph from 2017 shows a member of the ground crew in front of the just-landed Soyuz MS spacecraft (US astronauts Peggy Whitson and Jack Fischer and Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin are still\u00a0inside the vehicle).<\/p>\n
McConnell says that \u201coften at these landings, the helicopters would arrive first with all the engineers and support crew\u201d, making it challenging to photograph freely. With this shot, he was able to \u201cget into position before the helicopters came and kicked up the sandstorm\u201d, and knew immediately it was a \u201cspecial image\u2026 unlike any other landing I had seen\u201d. It felt, he says, \u201cotherworldly\u201d.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nOpening with Kulash Akhmetova\u2019s poem Prayer<\/i> \u2013 \u201cI saw sandstorms \u2013 they wiped out the steppe settlement \/ I saw rockets \u2013 like visions, they hovered above me,\u201d she writes, in part of it \u2013 Some Worlds Have Two Suns<\/i> is out on 4 October.<\/p>\n\n
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Article amended on 4 October 2024<\/h4>\n
The man in the photograph is a member of the ground crew. Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin is in the vehicle.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\nTopics:<\/p>\n<\/section><\/div>\n
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