Launch of Soyuz MS-28. A trip that will be remembered for a long time.

The moment people travel to Baikonur for never arrives suddenly. It builds in the morning darkness, in the barely audible rustle of footsteps on concrete paths, in that special electricity in the air when the entire town knows: something is about to begin.

The five-day tour unfolded like a long and fascinating story, where each day added its own stroke to the vast canvas of space. We managed to witness the rollout of the launch vehicle and its installation on the launch pad, and to see places usually left out of shorter trips: from desolate gullies to legendary sites that still carry the scent of the engineering audacity of past eras.

We saw the “Grasshoppers.” That’s the affectionate nickname for the transport-erector units, looking at which you understand that the scale of Soviet ambitions was measured not in meters, but in ambition itself. 2800 tons of steel provided a stark contrast to the vastness around: a scale impossible to fully grasp until you stand right next to it.

Then there was Site 250 – the universal integrated test-stand for the “Energia” rocket. The desert wind roams the concrete, but the place still holds the energy of the 1987 launch, which you can imagine while looking at the launch pad control console.

Visiting the “Yubileiny” airfield was also impressive. The 4500-meter-long runway stretching into the steppe looks not like a piece of infrastructure, but like a feat of engineering stubbornness. This place needs no embellishment with words: on November 15, 1988, the “Buran” orbiter landed here. That fact alone is enough to feel a slight tremor beneath your feet.

The five days seemed to stretch our perception. We moved from site to site as if following the footprints of cosmic evolution. The evenings brought fatigue – the good kind, when your head is overflowing with facts and your heart with the feeling of being in a place that shaped the dreams of an entire nation.

On November 27, 2025, at 14:27 local time, the culmination arrived. The launch of Soyuz MS-28 became the final, brightest point of the tour. The crew – Sergey Kud-Sverchkov, Sergey Mikayev, and Christopher Williams – was preparing for orbit, and we were getting ready to witness what we had come all this way for.

The crowd at the spaceport checkpoint was so large it seemed the whole town had decided to be extras in a crowd scene. But the waiting here isn’t irritating; it gathers everything experienced over the five days into one tightly wound feeling.

And then – launch commands, sound, movement, fire. The Soyuz-2.1a launch vehicle, adorned with drawings by children fighting cancer, confidently lifted off the ground, carrying cherished wishes into space. And in the sky, “Korolev’s flower” was clearly visible: the side boosters separating, leaving a symmetrical sign that every viewer will remember for many years to come.

Our fascinating trip wove itself into a coherent story: about technology, scale, people, and the silence of the steppe, in which big dreams sound especially loud. Baikonur has a way of changing people imperceptibly – gently, but irrevocably. And this tour was yet more proof of that.