The ceremony of presenting of State awards of the Russian Federation took place on May 23 in the Catherine Hall of the Kremlin. The govermental awards were presented for Russian cosmonauts Fedor Yurchikhin (who made five expeditions to the ISS and nine spacewalks), Andrey Borisenko and Oleg Novitsky (who performed two space flights each).

Specialists of Roscosmos enterprises at the Baikonur cosmodrome started operations to fuel the "Spectrum-RG" spacecraft with fuel components, and this operations will last for several days. The launch is scheduled for June 21, 2019. "Spectrum-RG" is a project, aimed for creating an orbital astrophysical observatory, designed to study the Universe in the X-ray wavelength range.

On April 17, 2019, the visit to Russia of Sultan bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud, Prince of Saudi Arabia, chairman of the board of directors of the Saudi space committe took place. The Saudi delegation also included representatives of the Space Agency and the King Abdulaziz Science and Technology Center. During the meeting, the parties discussed the potential possibilities of bilateral cooperation in the field of peaceful exploration and use of space. Saudi partners have shown interest in deepening relations between the two countries on a number of topics, such as manned cosmonautics, navigation satellite systems (and related technologies and services), Earth remote sensing and the joint development of space technology and ground-based space infrastructure.

The cosmonaut Alexander Skvortsov continues training tests in the GCTC. Alexander Skvortsov is preparing to fly in the main crew, which is scheduled to start in July of this year. During the training course, Alexander Skvortsov showed a confidently high level of knowledge and skills to perform a training cyclogram, having done well all the tasks.

On March 31, the general assembly of the "Soyuz-2.1a" launch vehicle with the "Progress MS-11" cargo spaceship was completed. Representatives of the Technical Management and the State Commission issued a document on readiness for the roll out and installation of the launch vehicle at the launch pad № 31. The roll out will take place tomorrow, on April 1. The launch of the "Progress MS-11" spacecraft is scheduled for 14:01 (Moscow time) on April 4.

In accordance with the flight program of the International Space Station (ISS), on February 26, 2019, a planned correction of the ISS orbit was performed. The working time of the engine system was 434 seconds. The purpose of the correction was the formation of ballistic conditions for launching and docking of the "Soyuz MS-12" spacecraft.

The Roscosmos State Corporation and the American company Space Adventures, Inc. have signed a contract for short-term space flights to the International Space Station (ISS) of two non-professional cosmonauts on one ship. The industry has already begun to create the "Soyuz" spacecraft and the "Soyuz-2" launch vehicle for the flight of tourists into space. The implementation of all space technology will be carried out at the expense of space tourists.

Petr Levochkin, chief designer of NPO "Energomash, designer and manufacturer of the famous "RD-180" family of engines, commented on the PR statement of Elon Musk about the “superiority” of "Raptor" engine, created by SpaceX: “The SpaceX company creates the "Raptor" engine on oxygen and methane components or, as is customary in the Russian classification, the gas-gas scheme. In such schemes, such a pressure level in the combustion chamber is not something extraordinary - in our designs for these schemes we lay down the pressure level in the chamber over 300 atmospheres. However, Mr. Musk, not being a technical specialist, does not take into account that the "RD-180" engine for the Atlas launch vehicle uses a completely different fuel circuit - “oxygen-kerosene”, and these are another parameters of the engine operation. It is like comparing a diesel and a gasoline internal combustion engine. Despite the fact, that our companies are competitors, we as engineers welcome the first successes of colleagues from SpaceX in the field of rocket engine building. Indeed, during the development of the Raptor engine, American engineers reached a record pressure level in the chamber. This indicates a fairly high level of development and production processes at SpaceX. ”

Today, at the GCTC has completed experimental studies on the development of interactions between the cosmonaut and the anthropomorphic robot, which is controlled in a teleoperator mode. The goal was to develop a standard technique, that could be further replicated for various studies. The experiment equipment includes a screen, a projector, automated workplaces of the experiment support team. Now it is exploring an anthropomorphic robot, created by the NPO "Android Technics", with which the GCTC has been cooperating for a long time. But in the future, the interaction of cosmonauts with any other space robots will be tested here.

A quarter of a century ago, on February 3, 1994, the "Discovery" shuttle was launched under the STS-60 program. It is significant, because for the first time a Russian cosmonaut flew on an American spacecraft. It was Sergey Krikalev, for whom STS-60 was the third expedition in his career. The flight duration was 8 days 7 hours. STS-60 went down in history as the first joint Russian-American launch.