According to press-service of Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center, following the training schedule, prime and backup crews of Expedition 36/37 to the ISS have their qualification simulations, planned for April 29-30 & May 6-7.
The launch of Soyuz TMA-09M with the crew of Fyodor Yurchikhin (Roscosmos), Luca Prmitano (ESA) and Karen Nyberg (NASA) is planned for night of May 28 to 29. Their backups are Michail Tyurin (Roscosmos), Rick Mastracchio (NASA) and Koichi Wakata (JAXA). In accordance with the ISS flight program this mission is supposed to use the four-orbit rendezvous profile, which means the duration of autonomous flight to the ISS will take less than 6 hours. For this reason crews have to pass additional exams on such an operation.
During qualification exams crewmember encounter a number of malfunctions such as failures of communication and life support systems, problems of motion and attitude control, fire and depressurization emergencies. So far all prime and backup crews’ operations are rated as excellent.
Image of Gagarin Cosmonaut Trainin Center
