Phobos-Grunt launched successfully on its Zenit rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome and was dropped off into an elliptical orbit with an apogee (farthest point from Earth) of 345km.
The Cupola is travelling into orbit attached to the end cone of Node 3 but once in orbit will be transferred to a berthing point that looks straight down to Earth.
Others question how NASA can claim to be making much exploratory progress when the greatest accomplishment it can point to 36 years after sending Glenn into orbit is sending Glenn back into orbit.
As a result, the project's motto is "any orbit, any time, " and a big selling point is that the carrier aircraft can relocate more than 1, 300 miles without refueling to search for a suitable launch location.