APOD: Little Planet Soyuz (2018 Jun 15)

[APOD Robot]

Little Planet Soyuz

Explanation: Engines blazing, a large rocket bids farewell to this little planet. Of course, the little planet is really planet Earth and the large rocket is a Soyuz-FG rocket. Launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on June 6 it carried a Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft into orbit. On board were International Space Station Expedition 56-57 crew members Sergey Prokopyev of Roscosmos, Serena Aunon-Chancellor of NASA and Alexander Gerst of ESA. Their spacecraft successfully docked with humanity's orbiting outpost just two days later. The little planet projection is the digitally warped and stitched mosaic of images covering 360 by 180 degrees, captured during the 2018 Star Trek car expedition.

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[Ann]

That's a very big rocket to overcome the puny gravity of that little boulder of a planet.

But perhaps the planet isn't a planet, but a white dwarf? Or a neutron star? Sorry, proud rocket. I don't know what kind of engines you'd need to take off from a neutron star, but in any case, you wouldn't stand so tall!

(But I can see what looks like grass and bushes growing on the little planet... I didn't think that kind of stuff would grow on a neutron star...)

Ann

[heehaw]

Le petit prince!

[De58te]

This APOD reminds me of a song that was on Disney, perhaps the Mickey Mouse Club, that went something like; "It's a small world after all, it's a small, small world."

[Sa Ji Tario]

If it were a neutron star, intense gravity would crush the metal in a thin layer over the surface

[Jim Leff]

Why did it take two days to reach ISS? And why does the caption say "just" two days?

[Elroy2018]

It would be nice if we could get back to ASTRONOMY pictures on ASTRONOMY Picture Of the Day ! I'm tired of weather (cloudbow) pictures and heavily photoshopped rockets (today). There are billions of actual astronomical objects of which to post pictures.

[neufer]

Why did it take two days to reach ISS? And why does the caption say "just" two days?

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/stat ... orbit.html

[neufer]

That's a very big rocket to overcome the puny gravity of that little boulder of a planet.

But perhaps the planet isn't a planet, but a white dwarf? Or a neutron star? Sorry, proud rocket.
I don't know what kind of engines you'd need to take off from a neutron star, but in any case, you wouldn't stand so tall!

If the Earth were crushed to a diameter of ~80 m (almost white dwarf density)
it would have an escape velocity of ~0.015 c.

[aildoux]

A little planet for The Little Prince.

[tekcoyote]

"On board were International Space Station Expedition 56-57 crew members Sergey Prokopyev...." Didn't he write the music, Peter and the Rocket?