Ryazansky, the current commander of the Soyuz MS-05 mission to the International Space Station (ISS), launched on July 28, shared captivating images of the Crimea bridge taken from the ISS via social media accounts.
"At the beginning of this week one of the most difficult designs was installed — a railway arch weighing 6,000 tons was hoisted on the abutments at a height of 35 meters above sea level," he wrote in a Facebook post.
"You can clearly see it on the photos, and the last two were taken several days before the installation. The progress is obvious."
On August 29 it was reported that construction workers had successfully executed a difficult operation under the control of the project's lead engineers. It took workers several days to transport the arch some 5 km offshore, and about 12 hours to get it installed. RT published the video of the installation on Tuesday.
The bridge, connecting the peninsula with the Krasnodar Territory, will be 19 km long. The astronaut added in his post that the ISS closely monitored the construction.
Astronauts Oleg Novitskiy and Oleg Skripochka also shared photos of the bridge in February 2017 and August 2016, respectively. Novitskiy said he was deeply impressed with the scale of the construction even from space.
Russian cosmonauts working onboard the ISS regularly publish spellbinding photographs of Earth taken from orbit.
#КраскиЗемли: пустыни всегда поражают своим разнообразием. // #EarthArt: colours of deserts can play out in such astonishingly varied ways. pic.twitter.com/FYSOah6O9O
— Сергей Рязанский (@SergeyISS) 31 августа 2017 г.
#КраскиЗемли: Удивительные краски Африки — озеро в Египте // #EarthArt: Amazing colors of Africa — lake in Egypt pic.twitter.com/W926lLJa9Z
— Сергей Рязанский (@SergeyISS) 29 августа 2017 г.
Бермудские О-ва, расположенные в с-з части Атлантического океана // #Bermuda is a British Overseas Territory in the North Atlantic Ocean pic.twitter.com/xwELVabFMS
— Сергей Рязанский (@SergeyISS) 26 августа 2017 г.
В Никарагуа проснулся вулкан #СанКристобаль 🌋// #SanCristbal volcano eruption in Nicaragua 🌋 pic.twitter.com/S6JOl8SwQs
— Сергей Рязанский (@SergeyISS) 20 августа 2017 г.
On August 1 Ryazansky and NASA astronaut Jack Fischer shared breathtaking images of one of the strongest storms of the year — super Typhoon Noru — as it gained momentum over the Pacific Ocean.
Прямо сейчас этот #супертайфун по имени #Нору «гуляет» над Тихим океаном. // Super #Typhoon #Noru swirling in the Pacific Ocean. pic.twitter.com/SUPOnXCM6h
— Сергей Рязанский (@SergeyISS) 1 августа 2017 г.
Ryazansky is an honored space hardware test engineer, awarded with both the Yuri A. Gagarin and the M. S. Ryazansky medals for the Russian Federation of Cosmonautics.
In 2013, he and astronaut Oleg Kotov spent 8 hours and 5 minutes in open space in Russian-made Orlan-MK space suits to attach two cameras — one high and one medium resolution — as part of a commercial agreement between a Canadian firm and the Russian Federal Space Agency to provide Earth views to internet-based subscribers.
The two set a record for the longest Russian spacewalk and the longest at the ISS in that year.
