Interdepartmental Commission approved main and back-up crews of new ISS mission. The launch of Soyuz TMA-19M is scheduled for December 15 and will take place from Baikonur spaceport, – GCTC spokesman stated.
The main crew comprises Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko, NASA astronaut Timothy Kopra and European astronaut Timothy Peake (Great Britain). Their back-up colleagues are Roscosmos cosmonaut Anatoply Ivanishin, NASA woman-astronaut Kathleen Rubins and Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi.
The crews are leaving for Baikonur on November 30.
For Malenchenko this flight will be the 6th one in space career, Timothy Kopra has been to space once, for Timothy Peake this flight is the first one. As for the back-up crew Anatoly Ivanishin will go to space for the second time and both Rubins and Onishi have no space flight experience.
Both crews have been passing long-duration preflight trainings in Russia, USA, Europe and Japan. New mission will conduct more than 50 scientific experiments in the field of medicine, ecology and astrophysics.
