Miracles on a Shoestring

baikonur, kazakhstan – The Central Asian steppe lights up and air billows as a nearly 300-ton

Soyuz rocket roars into the night sky. The projectile arches over southern Siberia and the Pacific Ocean, shedding its spent stages before the last, upper stage propels a European Space Agency (ESA) scientific probe on its long journey to Mars. It is the sort of textbook launch which customers have come to expect from the Russians.