expedition 70 space station crew undergoes final training outside moscow

Soyuz Commander Oleg Kononenko and Flight Engineer Nikolai Chub of Roscosmos and NASA Flight Engineer Loral O’Hara conducted final qualification training August 21 and 22 at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia, for their upcoming International Space Station mission. Their backups, cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin and NASA astronaut Tracy Caldwell-Dyson, joined them for the training sessions. Kononenko, Chub, and O’Hara are scheduled to launch Friday, Sept. 15 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in the Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft for a six-month mission on the International Space Station.