Every three months, a space rocket carrying three astronauts and
Cosmonauts to the International Space Station take off from the cosmodrome in
Baikonur, Kazakhstan. Around the same time, to the northeast, in
remote meadows, three more astronauts fall back to earth.
Photographs from Some Worlds Have Two Suns document these comings and goings of
Russian Soyuz spacecraft and the local community whose lives are
accidentally linked to this portal to space. When first visiting
McConnell in 2015, as astronauts and cosmonauts participated in
the landing ceremony, he saw a group of villagers from
Kenjebai-Samai came to witness the strange event that was taking place in their
own garden. Although he was initially attracted by space travelers,
It was the local community residing in the isolated grasslands that pushed him to
return. The Soyuz spacecraft has been in service since the late 1960s and is
considered the safest and most cost-effective space vehicle. The capsule
of the vessel, which is not reusable, measures only 2.2 meters long and
2.1 meters wide. They can carry up to three people, do not put
only six hours to reach the space station and the descent module, and
only three and a half hours to get back. For a while, after
NASA's retirement of the space shuttle in 2011, rocket launches
Russian Soyuz stations in Kazakhstan were the only functioning portal to the Station
international space. The word "Soyuz" means "union" in Russian.
