Kazakh astronaut Aidyn Aimbetov was included in ISS mission crew, Roscosmos official representative Igor Burenkov said.
“That’s right, Roscosmos has chosen Kazcosmos cosmonaut Aidyn Aimbetov to be ISS-44/45 mission, he has already started to train. Final decision is to be made by all ISS program participants, we will announce the details late this month”, – Burenkov said.
It was reported in May that Kazakh cosmonaut has all the opportunities to take the vacant seat in Soyuz.
According to the spokesman Aimbetov and his cosmonaut-colleague Aimakhanov passed the trainings in GCTC in 2007. One of them was to go to the ISS in Autumn 2009 but this period Kazakhstan was facing hard times and couldn’t pay 30 million dollars, the flight was postponed due to the financing reduction.
Currently Kazakhstan’s welfare is growing, Kazakh-Russian relations has strengthened.
The launch of Soyuz TMA-18M with Russian cosmonaut Sergey Volkov, ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen and Aidyn Aimbetov (Kazkosmos) onboard is planned for September 1, 2015 and will take place from Baikonur spaceport.
As Space Adventures Company dealing with short ISS flight candidates selection has reported earlier this day Japanese entrepreneur Satoshi Takamatsu who has been passing trainings in GCTC together with Sarah Brightman is not going to fly to the ISS in September. He will go on training in GCTC to become certified space flight participant in 2-3 years.
