Today, on March 13, the State Commission at the Baikonur cosmodrome approved the main and backup crews of the “Soyuz MS-12” spacecraft and confirmed the readiness of the “Soyuz-FG / Soyuz MS-12” rocket-space complex and the ground infrastructure to the launch according to the International Space Station (ISS) program.
The main crew – Roskosmos cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin (crew commander), NASA astronauts Nick Hague (flight engineer) and Christina Koch (flight engineer-2).
The backup crew – Roskosmos cosmonaut Alexander Skvortsov, ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano and NASA astronaut Andrew Morgan.
At the end of the State Commission meeting, members of the main and backup crews answered questions from Russian and foreign journalists and told about the plans for the upcoming expedition at a traditional pre-flight press conference.
The launch of the “Soyuz MS-12” spacecraft with the crew of the next long expedition to the ISS is scheduled for March 14, 2019 from site № 1 (Gagarinsky Start) of the Baikonur cosmodrome.