Site 31/6 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome is a launch site used by derivatives of the R-7 Semyorka missile. From 2011 onwards, it will be the launch site for manned Soyuz missions to the International Space Station, when launches switch from the Soyuz-FG carrier rocket to the Soyuz-2, which is unable to use the current launch pad at Site 1/5.
It was first used on 14 January 1961, for an R-7A ICBM test mission. It is currently used for commercial Soyuz-FG/Fregat missions, and Soyuz-2 launches. In the 1970s and early 1980s, several manned missions were launched from the site.
After several years a new manned spaceflight was conducted from LC31. Soyuz TMA-06M was launched on 23 October 2012.
Famous quotes containing the word site:
“It is not menstrual blood per se which disturbs the imagination—unstanchable as that red flood may be—but rather the albumen in the blood, the uterine shreds, placental jellyfish of the female sea. This is the chthonian matrix from which we rose. We have an evolutionary revulsion from slime, our site of biologic origins. Every month, it is woman’s fate to face the abyss of time and being, the abyss which is herself.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)