After the Surgeon, the Priest...

Let's reassure all of you first, nothing terminal.

Few days ago, Alexander showed by chance a series of launch pictures to Bill among which, one with a priest on the launch site, obviously triggered a question on our side:
-What is that for?
-Just the usual blessing ceremony... answered Alexander

and then?

To know more, Bill, Richard and Andrei went to the Baikonur Russian Orthodox church (Saint George). They manage to meet with Father Sergei who provided some more details.


They learned that it has now become a tradition on the Russian side that 1 day before launch at about 12:00 am an Orthodox Father is invited to the launch pad for blessing the launcher.

The exact procedure is not known but it seems that Priest has to spread droplets of blessed water on the "head"of the launcher.

According to Farther Sergei, this ceremony should be interpreted as blessing the intense team work and positive aspects of the mission more than blessing a "piece of metal".

This interview gave us also a better insight on the origin of this tradition.
It started in 1998 with the 1st Proton launch. The second launch that was not blessed failed. The blessing was re-established for the 3rd launch (successful), and forgotten(?) for the 4th launch which failed.
Since, the "rocket blessing tradition" is fully re-enforced but exact statistics showing correlation between launch success and Rocket blessing are not available and do not allow scientific conclusions.

But..
In 2006, launch of Belorussians satellite "Belka" ended up in a failure. According to father Sergei, no blessing was performed.

And very recently, Saudians had a payload to be launched on a Dniepr rocket. During the integration they experienced serious problems that led to postpone the launch twice. At that stage it was decided to perform the blessing and according to available information the 3rd time was the good one where the launch took place!

Back to CryoSat-2, be informed that the launcher blessing is planned to take place on 24/02/2010 at 12:00 (likely there will be no witness on our side (?)).
In case you pop up at the Baikonur church at this time for urgent matters, you may read on the door the following message:

"We will be back shortly!"

photo Baikonur St George's church credit