On May 6, 2015 of 44/45 mission main and back-up crew started passing complex examinational trainings in GCTC.

The back-up crew comprising Yuri Malenchenko (Roscosmos), Timothy Kopra (NASA) and Timothy Peake (ESA) was the first to start training on Soyuz TMA-M spacecraft simulator (at 08.20, Moscow time).

Crew commander Yuri Malenchenko reported to the State Commission made up of GCTC, RSC Energia and NASA representatives about the readiness for the training. The crew got an exam card with off-nominal situations to cope with during the training “flight”.  The crew doesn’t know what situations they are to cope with , and will learn it only in the course of the training.

Answering the question about the difficulties Yuri Malenchenko said:”We work in accordance with the nominal program of the flight from the insertion to the landing. It takes us the whole day. The main difficulty is to pass all this way very carefully, without any mistakes. Besides we have to cope with off-nominal situations arising and impeding our work. The difficulty is to stay concentrated fir the whole day.

At 08.40 main crew consisting of Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, JAXA astronaut Kimiya Yu and NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren started training on Russian ISS segment simulator. Before the training started the crew members answered the journalists’ questions. Mass media representatives were curious about the training the cosmonauts’ attitude. Commander Oleg Kononenko said his crew is ready to show professional skills, Kimiya Yui  also added that the crew has a very reliable and experience commander.

During the training the main crew is to find the fault or disagreement in Soyuz spacecraft and ISS systems in time, determine what exactly happened and find a solution to cope with the situation. The results depend on crew integration, their precise and correct actions.