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Soyuz
Launches Mission to Space Station / Will Film Japanese TV
Commercial
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A Soyuz U
successfully launched Soyuz TM-33 from Baikonur Cosmodrome, pad LC
1, at 08:59 UTC on October 21. The spacecraft is expected to dock
with the International Space Station (ISS) on October 23 at 11:41
UTC. The Soyuz capsule carried a three-person crew,
Russian cosmonauts Viktor Afanasyev (Commander) and
Konstantin Kozeyev (Flight Engineer), as well as Frenchwoman
Claudie Haignere (Flight Engineer), for a 10 day mission. Haignere,
Afanasyev and Kozeyev will spend eight days at the space station
conducting experiments, and are scheduled to return to Earth on
October 31 using Soyuz TM-32. One of the main objectives of the
flight is to deliver the new Soyuz spacecraft to the space station
to serve as the station lifeboat in the event of an emergency. It
is replaced every six months.
One of the
highlights of the mission will be Afanasyev and Kozeyev filming a
commercial for Japan's Dentsu Company on October 26-27  to
advertise the popular Pocari Sweat soft drink. This will be the
first time the Japanese have shot a TV commercial in space. The
Soyuz TM-33 crew is bringing a supply of the popular beverage with
them. The Russians are to film and act in the shoot. Dentsu will
use a High-Definition TV camera and tapes, owned by Japan's
National Space Development agency (NASDA), which is installed in
the Russian module of the station, for 50 minutes of shooting.
Dentsu has a contract giving them the right to 17 hours of filming
inside the Russian module of the ISS. The approximate cost of the
project is  several hundreds of thousands of dollars. NASDA said
Dentsu's free use of the tapes and camera, which it paid the
Russians to take up, along with a small amount of unused weight
allowance the agency has contracted from Russian launchers, are
the extent of its financial  contribution to the project. The
commercial is expected to air next January. The Russian members of
the ISS Expedition Three crew filmed a commercial for Kodak last
week during their spacewalks from the Pirs Docking Compartment 1.
 The mission is
also sponsored by the French Ministry for Research and is being
carried out under an agreement between the French space agency
CNES, the Russian space agency Rosaviakosmos, and Russian
aerospace giant RSC Energia. This visiting crew will study the
operation of the human cardio-vascular system in zero gravity, the
growth and development of plants, the crystallization of proteins,
examine lightning strikes, and the pollution of Earth.
Before
this Soyuz flight was launched, the space station's Expedition
Three crew moved the Soyuz TM-32 from the Earth-facing port on the
Zarya module to a new location on the Russian Pirs Docking
Compartment, clearing the port for the arrival of the visiting
crew.
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