SOYUZ CREW PREPARES FOR LAUNCH TO THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION

At the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia, NASA astronaut Tracy Dyson, Soyuz commander Oleg Novitskiy of Roscosmos and spaceflight participant Marina Vasilevskaya of Belarus and their backups, NASA’s Don Pettit, Ivan Vagner of Roscosmos and Anastasia Lenkova of Belarus participated in qualification exams Feb. 28 and 29 as part of their pre-launch training for their flight to the International Space Station. Dyson, Novitskiy and Vasilevskaya are scheduled to launch in the Soyuz MS-25 spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan March 21. Dyson will spend six months on the station, returning to Earth in September on Soyuz MS-25 while Novitskiy and Vasilevskaya will return to Earth April 2 on Soyuz MS-24 along with NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara, who has been aboard the orbital complex since last September.