On Friday GCTC saw press-conference of ISS-47/48 mission crews. Before the presss conference Interdepartmental Commission meeting Roscosmos, GCTC, RSC Energia and Federal Bio-Medical Agency representatives were taking part in approved the crews for further preflight preparations at Baikonur.  The main crew of Soyuz TMA-20M spacecraft comproses Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexei Ovchinin and Oleg Skripochka and NASA astronaut Jeffrey Williams, the back-up crew – Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Andrei Borisenko and NASA astronaut Robert Kimbrough.

Mass media congratulated the cosmonauts on successful completion of examination trainings and asked them about their preflight trainings, experiments onboard the ISS planned and personal belongings the cosmonauts are going to take with them to the space.

Cosmonauts told how they feel on threshold of their upcoming space mission.

Alexei Ovchinin showed the journalists so-called zero-g indicator, his daughter’s toy, a small owlet.  The owlet will remind me of my home while I’ll be working onboard the ISS”, – said the crew commander.

After press-conference following long-standing tradition the crews visited memorable places of Russian cosmonautics.