Some Worlds Have Two Suns -signed

‘I became interested in theSoyuz landing after seeing the event in a documentary in 2014. It was deepwinter and the spacecraft descended under parachute into an ice world. A groundteam battled the harsh conditions to open the capsule and when eventually threehumans emerged my heart skipped a beat…I had just returned from covering a warand had witnessed the very worst of humanity, yet here were humans workingtogether and achieving the seemingly impossible. In my jaded state it wasprofoundly moving and I resolved to go and see it for myself.’ 

During McConnell’s firstvisit in 2015, as the astronauts and cosmonauts were taking part in the landingceremony, he saw a group of locals from the village of Kenjebai-Samai who hadcome to witness the strange event taking place in their own back yard. Althoughhe had initially been drawn to record the space travellers, it was the localcommunity residing in the isolated grasslands who compelled him to return. 

‘On each visit I would stayin Kenjebai-Samai orexplore further afield. The steppe, which at first appeared as a boundlessvoid, would over time reveal unexpected details. I found a people largelyuninterested in the space travellers and yet somehow bound up in this strangeritual. These descendants of nomads once again on the edge of a new horizon.’ 

The Soyuz spacecraft hasbeen in operation since the late 1960s and due to its length of service isconsidered the safest and most cost-effective space vehicle. The capsule of thespacecraft, which are not reusable, measure just 2,2 metres long and 2.1 metreswide. They can carry up to three people, take just six hours to reach the spacestation and the descent module, just three and a half hours to return. For aperiod after the retirement of NASA’s spaceshuttle in 2011 the Russian Soyuz rocket launches in Kazakhstan werethe sole working portal to the International Space Station. The word ‘soyuz’means ‘union’ in Russian.