ISS-39/40 crews are having very important preflight training stage in GCTC now. During previous 2 weeks cosmonauts and astronauts have been passing exams on manual docking, approaching and descending of Soyuz TMA-M spacecraft and practiced manual remote control mode.
According to the program for space flight preparations main and back-up crews have to experience standard flight day.
On February 27 the main crew of ISS 39/40 mission consisting of Alexander Skvortsov (Roscosmos), Oleg Artemyev (Roscosmos) and Stephen Swanson (NASA) practiced full standard working day. The cosmonauts performed the program planned, in the course of program accomplishment they faced a number of off-nominal situations.
A day earlier back-up crew members (Alexander Samokutyaev, Elena Serova(Roscosmos), Barry Wilmore(NASA) had similar training.
Following the results of this standard flight day trainings commission gave an estimate of crews’ work.
Training participants accomplished all tasks in accordance with the time schedule.
On march 4 and 5 main and back up crews will have complex examination trainings on Soyuz TMA-M spacecraft simulator and ISS Russian segment simulator.
Soyuz TMA-12M will be launched on March 26, 2014.
Image credit – Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center
