On July 8, 2015, in GCTC Interdepartmental Commission approved next ISS crew to go to the station onboard Soyuz TMA-17M spacecraft.
The main crew comprises Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko (crew commander), JAXA astronaut Kimiya Yui (1st flight engineer) and NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren (2nd flight engineer).
The back-up crew includes Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko, American astronaut Timothy Kopra and British astronaut Timothy Peake.
On Friday, July 10, the cosmonauts leave for Baikonur spaceport where they are going to pass final preflight trainings.
The launch of Soyuz-FG booster wuh TMA-17M manned spacecraft is scheduled for July 23, 00.03, Moscow time.
For Oleg Kononenko it will be the third flight. Total duration of his previous flights amounts to 391 days. JAXA astronaut Kimiya Yui and NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren will perform the first flight in their space career.
Russia is going to perform 7 space launches in February-March, – Roscosmos press-office representative reported. 2 launches will take place from Baikonur in future month:…
The year 2013 is of great importance for Russian cosmonautics as in June we celebrate 50th anniversary of the first woman Valentine Tereshkova space flight….
The preparation of the next manned spacecraft for the ISS flight has started in the integration building of 245 launchpad of Baikonur spaceport. Soyuz TMA-14M…
The GCTC continues to prepare crews for the forthcoming expedition to the ISS. One of its stages is the “Typical Flight Day” test, which shows…
Russia successfully started its 2014 space flight program. Progress M-22M cargo vehicle launched from Baikonur spaceport on February 5, 20.23 Moscow time, successfully docked with…
On August 18, 2014 according to the ISS flight schedule ISS-40/41 mission crew members Alexander Skvortsov and Oleg Artemyev will perform the spacewalk. Pirs docking…
Preparations are in process at the Baikonur Cosmodrome for launching the “Proton-M” launch vehicle with the DM-03 upper stage and “Electro-L” №3 Russian meteorological satellite….
On March 14 ISS-42/44 mission main (Gennady Padalka, Roscosmos; Mikhail Korniyenko, Roscosmos; Scott Kelly, NASA) and back-up (Alexey Ovchinin, Roscosmos; Sergey Volkov, Roscosmos; Jeffrey Williams,…












