TIME Science space Rocket Bound for Space Station Rolls Out in the Kazakh Steppes The Russian Soyuz that will carry Scott Kelly to space for a year has its coming-out party in the frigid pre-dawn

All activity stops in the vicinity of a Soyuz rocket after the dog walks. The dog will walk on a lot of occasions, but especially the day the rocket rolls out to the pad. The two kilometer (1.25 mi.) trip takes more than two hours to complete, with the rocket lying on a flat-bed rail car and the train chugging no faster than 5 km/h, (3 mph) making multiple stops along the way.

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At one point en route, the rail line crosses a road, and even on the locked-down, sealed-off grounds of the Baikonur Cosmodrome, that calls for special securitya bomb-sniffing dog to check the crossing when the train is still at least half a kilometer away. If youre on the wrong side of the track after that, youre out of luck. Nothing at all moves until the rocket crawls past, making its exceedingly slow way to the padpreparatory to making its exceedingly fast way to space a couple of days later.

Like everything else in the Russian space program, the rollout proceeds according to ritualdetermined by the needs of both the very breakable machines and the very superstitious people who build and fly them. Before dawn on March 25, the Soyuz set to carry astronaut Scott Kelly and cosmonauts Gennady Pedalka and Mikhail Kornienko to the International Space Stationwith Kelly and Kornienko scheduled to spend a year aloftemerged slowly from its hangar.

Factoring in the wind chill, it was 18 F (-8 C) in the Kazakh steppe, with the engine pulling the Soyuz the only thing anywhere emitting any heatand not much at that. The Soyuz emerges business end first, which is to say bottom end first, and thats a good way to meet it. It takes 20 engines bundled in five clusters to produce the thrust the rocket will need to muscle itself off the ground. The top of the rocket where the crew rides ride is the prettier endpainted white and decorated with a Russian flag and the Roscosmos logobut the men will never get to space in the first place without the fire the engines provide.

The route to the launch pad is lined by technicians, security officers and other personnel, including a Russian Orthodox priest, who will bless the rocket and the crew the following day. Amiko Kauderer, Kellys significant other, is here as well and while shes plenty inured to the idea of space flightthis will be Kellys fourth time aloftshe is as struck by the sheer physicality of the rocket as anyone else.

Isnt it gorgeous? she says. My guys got a hot ride.

The most prominent people not in attendance are the crewmen themselves, and thats not only because theyre in pre-flight medical quarantine. Its T-minus 64 hours, says astronaut Mike Fincke, who has himself launched twice from Baikonur and today is serving the traditional role of astronaut escort to a fellow astronauts familyin this case Kauderer and Kellys two daughters, Samantha, 20, and Charlotte, 11. The crew has a lot of other things to do, but its also part of the tradition and superstition for them to stay away. Its like not seeing the bride before the wedding.

When the Soyuz reaches the pad, it still must be stood upright, a process that was once called its erection, until everyone just got tired of the jokesespecially after the Americans began flying out of the old Soviet space port. Now the term is verticalizing.

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Rocket Bound for Space Station Rolls Out in the Kazakh Steppes