For veteran Nasa astronaut Dan Burbank, 50, it is his first voyage on board a Soyuz spacecraft.

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SpaceWire is a computer network for use on board spacecraft, which connects together instruments, mass-memory, processors, the downlink telemetry, and other onboard sub-systems.

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In March 1972, a plaque he designed with legendary astronomer Carl Sagan was blasted into space on board the Pioneer 10 spacecraft. ( Click here to see the Pioneer Plaque.) A few years later, Drake and Sagan would team up again on a much more ambitious project, attaching a gold-plated record full of music and photos onto the two Voyager probes.

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We actually had impact censors on board, and the spacecraft was being hit by rocks up to almost half a centimeter, almost the size of--between a raisin and a grape in size.

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