A Russian Orthodox priest blesses the Soyuz TMA-12M spacecraft on the launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome . Launch of the Soyuz rocket is scheduled for March 26 and will send Expedition 39 Soyuz Commander Alexander Skvortsov of the Russian Federal Space Agency, astronaut Steven Swanson of NASA, cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev of Roscosmos on a six-month mission aboard the International Space Station.

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A Russian Orthodox priest blesses the Soyuz TMA-12M spacecraft on the launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome . Launch of the Soyuz rocket is scheduled for March 26 and will send Expedition 39 Soyuz Commander Alexander Skvortsov of the Russian Federal Space Agency, astronaut Steven Swanson of NASA, cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev of Roscosmos on a six-month mission aboard the International Space Station.

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Size: 5150px × 3367px
Location: Baikonur, Kazakhstan
Photo credit: © NASA Photo / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No

Keywords: blesses, blessing, day, horizontal, iss, kazakhstan, nasa, orthodox, outdoors, pre-launch, preflight, priest, religion, rocket, rocketship, roscosmos, russia, russian, soyuz, space, spacecraft, tma-12m