During previous 2 weeks cosmonauts and astronauts have been passing exams on manual docking, approaching and descending of Soyuz TMA-M spacecraft and practiced manual remote control mode. According to the program for space flight preparations main and back-up crews have to experience standard flight day.

British singer Sarah Brightman will fly to the ISS in autumn 2015 as a space tourist. She starts training in Russian GCTC not later than half a year before the launch of Soyuz TMA-18M.

Roscosmos and JAXA representatives started working on Russian and Japanese space telescopes projects uniting. Both telescopes are designed to explore extragalactic space rays. The devices supposed to be installed on the ISS have to record glowing tracks formed by high-energy particles entering the atmosphere.

Cosmonaut Valeri Kubasov twice Hero of the Soviet Union and participant of the famous Apollo-Soyuz program died on Wednesday evening at the age of 79, - RSC Energia reports.

Yevgeny Anisimov stepped down from the post for personal reasons and will likely be reappointed to a position at Russia's space launch coordination body, spokeswoman Irina Zubareva said.

Space device separated from Briz-M upper stage at 10.22 Moscow time. It was the first time Proton-M booster is used to orbit the satellite of Turkish operator Turksat Satellite Communication.

The landing of Soyuz TMA-10M manned spacecraft with Oleg Kotov, Sergey Ryazansky (Roscosmos) and Michael Hopkins (NASA) onboard was shifted from March 12 to March 11. Tha place of lamding was also changed because of great amount of snow in Arkalyk region where descent module was initially planned to land.

Main and back-up ISS-39/40 crews started their examinations that will last till late February. Early March cosmonauts and astronauts will start complex examination trainings that generally complete preflight trainings in GCTC.

Russia successfully started its 2014 space flight program. Progress M-22M cargo vehicle  launched from Baikonur spaceport on February 5, 20.23…

“Aquarium-AQH experiment is planned to be conducted in the American ISS segment, in Japanese Kibo module in JAXA Aquatic Habitat (AQH) aquarium. Among other biological objects sent to the station are wigglers and flat earthworms”, - the spokesman noted. Russian-Japanese Aquarium-AQH experiment is aimed at the exploration of space flight impact on closed ecological system and its elements (plants, animals, fish) sustainability under microgravity conditions.