Baikonur prepares to meet new ISS crew

The Interdepartmental Commission at the Cosmonauts Training Centre reviewed the results of the crews’ readiness for space flight and took a decision on final stage of pre-launch preparation at Baikonur, the press service of Roscosmos informed.

The main crew consists of Soyuz MS-03 commander, ISS 50/51 flight engineer Oleg Novitskiy (Roscosmos), ISS 50/51 flight engineer Thomas Pesquet (ESA) and ISS 50 flight engineer, ISS 51 commander  Peggy Whitson (NASA).

Backup crew includes Roscosmos cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin, NASA astronaut Jack Fisher and ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli.

After the sitting, the Commission gave a press conference at the Cosmonauts Training Centre.

The blastoff of the Soyuz MS-03 spacecraft with ISS 50/51 mission crew onboard is scheduled for November 16, 2016.

Two crews are working now at the ISS. These are Russian Anatoly Ivanishin, Japanese Takuya Onishi and American Kathleen Rubins working at the ISS for almost four months and Russian cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov, Andrey Borisenko and American Robert Shane Kimbrough who left for the ISS a week ago.

Ivanishin, Onishi and Rubins will return to the Earth on October 30, 2016.