Black smoke belches out of a grinding old engine as it hauls Russia's latest Soyuz space capsule across a Kazakh wasteland, while armed guards keep watch. This mixture of high and low technology is probably the future of space exploration, as resources get scarcer and more small governments and independent operators get into the space game. More images of Soyuz in the wasteland, and its launch to the International Space Station, below.

Images by AP/Dmitry Lovetsky