Some Worlds Have Two Suns

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

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

‘On each visit I would stay in Kenjebai-Samai or explore further afield. The steppe, which at first appeared as a boundless void, would over time reveal unexpected details. I found a people largely uninterested in the space travellers and yet somehow bound up in this strange ritual. These descendants of nomads once again on the edge of a new horizon.’ 

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