At the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia, Expedition 42/43 backup crewmembers Kjell Lindgren of NASA (left), Soyuz Commander Oleg Kononenko of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos, center) and Kimiya Yui of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (right) pose for pictures in front of a Soyuz simulator October 30 as part of their final qualification exams for flight. They are the backups to the prime crew – Terry Virts of NASA, Anton Shkaplerov of Roscosmos and Samantha Cristoforetti of the European Space Agency – who are in the final stages of training for launch November 24, Kazakh time, in the Soyuz TMA-15M spacecraft to begin a five and a half month mission on the International Space Station.
NASA/Stephanie Stoll
2014-10-30
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