Last week main and back-up crews of ISS-43/44 mission started passing exams.

The main crew comprises Roscosmos cosmonauts Gennady Padalka and Mikhail Korniyenko and NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, the back-up crew – Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and NASA astronaut Geffrey Williams.

Crew commanders G. Padalka and A. Ovchinin have already successfully passed exam on Teleoperator simulator. Specialized simulator of cargo vehicle remote approaching and docking with ISS modules is designed to train the crews how to control unmanned vehicles manually. The cosmonauts have to master the skills of manual approaching and docking in case of any off-nominal situation.

Both crews also passed examinational trainings on Don-Soyuz simulator.

In the course of the trainings Russian cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Sergey Volkov passed trainings on specialized facility on the basis of Centrifuge TsF-7.  Exam on manual descent was conducted under conditions of rotating centrifuge at the moment of spacecraft control. The cosmonauts were set the task to land the descent module as close to the target point as possible experiencing minimum g-loads at that. Gennady Padalka and Mikhail Korniyenko were the next to pass the similar training.

Photo credit GCTC