The twelve hour mark was the point that ExoMars oriented itself, deployed its solar panels and pointed the main antenna towards Earth.

The pressure under the rocket is actually higher than atmospheric pressure because fuel and oxidiser are turning to high temperature gas. The rocket is however surrounded by relatively low pressure zones as it accelerates through the atmosphere and generates immense shockwaves. You can often see these on launches from…

The Proton burns a mixture of hydrazine and dinitrogen tetroxide which produce a near clear exhaust with only a small amount of brown nitrogen dioxide. By comparison, the US now only really uses either kerosene/liquid oxygen or liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen - the last major rocket in the US to use hydrazene was the…