Today, on December 2, 2018, the traditional press conference of the “Soyuz MS-11” spacecraft was held at the Training Complex of GCTC at the Baikonur City.
The cosmonauts and astronauts answered the journalists’ questions and told about the plans of the upcoming expedition to the International Space Station (ISS), spacewalks and the super-abilities, needed in space.
Earlier, the State Commission approved the crews of the ship.
The Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, astronaut of the Canadian space agency David Saint-Jacques and NASA astronaut Anne McClain have joined the main crew of “Soyuz MS-11” spacecraft.
Their backups are Alexander Skvortsov, Luca Parmitano and Andrew Morgan.
The cosmonauts and the astronauts shared their impressions of the upcoming launch after the emergency one.
Oleg Kononenko said, that “risk is a component of our profession. We go through many training sessions, where we work on various abnormal situations, so we understand, that we can encounter them in real space flight, but we also understand that people, who assemble a ship and a rocket, try to do this as accurately as possible, following as much technical documentation as possible. They understand that in this ship people will start on this rocket, we absolutely trust them. We are psychologically and technically ready for the launch and for any situations that, God forbid, will occur on board. ”
Anne McClain stated, that “we are sufficiently prepared for this flight. We are confident, that our flight will be successful due to the fact, that the necessary investigations were carried out by Roskosmos and NASA. ”
In her opinion, when such situations occur, three main questions need to be asked: what happened, why it happened and how to prevent the situation from recurring, and she is sure, that the flight will be successful, because from the accident, that occurred, to this day several successful launches were performed.
David Saint-Jacques noted that “at the moment, when it all happened, I was lucky that I was here, next to the crew, who felt great after a bad start. Everything went well, and thanks to the fact, that smart people, who created the rocket and the emergency rescue system and the ship work here, we managed to avoid the accident (of the ship) and I was lucky to see this situation. I am sure, that in our case this will not happen and everything will go smoothly. ”
Oleg Kononenko also spoke about going into open space, which is scheduled for December 11.
According to him, the main goal of the exit is to remove part of the anti-meteorite protection on “Soyuz MS-09”, which the drill might have touched, and return this part of the protection to Earth.
In accordance with the flight program of the International Space Station, on December 3, 2018 at 14:31 (Moscow time), the “Soyuz MS-11” spacecraft is scheduled to launch from the launch complex № 1 (Gagarinsky start) of the Baikonur Cosmodrome.
The docking of the “Soyuz MS-11” with the station is planned to be carried out automatically, the docking of the ship with the station will be carried out after six hours, according to the “short” scheme, and will take place on 3 December.
During long expeditions 58/59, the ISS crew will have to perform a large number of scientific experiments.
In addition, during the expedition it is planned to carry out work in open space.
The crew will also have to work with cargo ships, maintain the onboard systems of the International Space Station, perform onboard photography, video filming, etc.
