EXPEDITION 75 SPACE STATION CREW UNDERGOES FINAL TRAINING OUTSIDE MOSCOW

NASA astronaut Anil Menon and Roscosmos cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina conducted final qualification training June 18 and 19 at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia, for their upcoming International Space Station mission. Their backups, NASA astronaut Deniz Burnham and cosmonauts Dmitri Petelin and Konstantin Borisov, joined them for the training sessions. Menon, Dubrov, and Kikina are scheduled to launch July 14 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in the Soyuz MS-29 spacecraft for an eight-month mission on the International Space Station.

What is said in the film

Chairman of the Examination Commission. The crew of the SS 75 mission is ready for the final exam and qualification exam on the Russian segment of the International Space Station. Commander Petter Dobrev, please sign here. And read the questions. Good luck.

As always, make sure to call down and report. Real. That's the right attitude. Well trained. Please.

Five minutes of quiet. Thank you. Hello. Is this time you fly? As the commander.

What do you think of your crew? Do you see team cohesion? And do you feel that you personally are ready to command a space mission? Well, I can tell you that I can absolutely rely on any and all members of our crew. I have full confidence in all of them and no doubt that we will achieve all mission objectives.

It's an excellent crew, and one of the crew members is currently the only active female cosmonaut. So I am completely confident. What kind of of normal situations you will be encountering at this same couple of normal situations can be really random. There are many systems on the station. Life support payloads, electrical power.

Any of those systems can suffer failures and we have to be ready for all of them, including emergencies. Ana, this is your first flight on Soyuz. Do you see any differences between the training? And are you happy to fly on the Soyuz? Of course, I am happy to fly on Soyuz.

I have been waiting for this since 2012. And happy to be a part of this crew. We are ready. We are confident. We will feel, ready and able to do the mission.

Anil, what do you think of of your crew? Have you met their families? Have you gotten close? Oh, it's a great crew. It has been my dream.

And this dream has come true for the last two years. So we have been, really, training together. Well, learning from each other. And we. I think we are ready for the mission.

I know this is your first flight, and, this first flight is on this Soyuz vehicle. Is this a test for you or a gift? Is it a challenge for you? It's, definitely a gift for me to work, on the Soyuz. I started working here in Star City in 2014 as a doctor, and I always admired the program, the history.

And, I can't believe I have the opportunity to fly in the Soyuz to fly with this crew. And I'm. What is the call sign of your crew? And do you think it will help you in, your work during the mission? Of course.

We do have a callsign. Tigress. It was, selected by our commander who can talk more about this. We have, tigers on our, logos. Tigers?

There are strong cats that go after their goals. And also, this represents Siberian tigers, protected species that we are trying to save from extinction. And the other meaning in Tigress is the name of, a ship, that was sailed by tour here. Dale and his crew on some remarkable voyages. And this inspires us, this image.

And, we are brought together in our desire for the common goal. Two questions for Pyotr. What's easier? To fly as a flight engineer for one year or be a commander for eight months? And the second question, what kind of of normal situations do you expect to encounter during this same.

Well, it's difficult to compare. And one year long mission as a flight engineer and another mission where you fly as a commander, there are, challenges associated with each one. My American colleague Mark VandeHei said to me, one year flight is like to six year, six months missions, except there is no final exam in between. So in some ways it's easier. But command being commander is, a whole new level of response ability.

You're responsible, for achieving mission objectives on the vehicle, on the station. The being a commander of, I assess increment crew is an honor and a great responsibility. And I hope that I will be worthy of that. And second question, what kind of a phenomenon situations you will expect today? Well, we will be responding to the above normal situations that we have been trained on.

Those that we call non or design of normal situations involving life support systems, maybe toilet, maybe, power failures. And of course they will be in a simulated emergency. Maybe rapid depress a fire or I'm on a release which will require rapid and for the needed response, because it is critical for the safety of the station. Could you please talk about the science program of your mission? The science program consists of many, different experiments.

Which may involve group participation or not. And I would like to mention two in experiments. One is the new FS gas analyzer, which is capable of, monitoring the entire atmosphere of the station for multiple components, both safe and those that can impact crew health. And the other experiment involves cutting edge robotics. It's called chili draw.

It will be testing capabilities of such systems in spaceflight, both inside the station and during EVAs. I would also like to note two remarkable experiments that will fall on our mission. Technical on that M as one, we are delivering fruit flies and we're going to study cell processes and behavior of fruit flies in spaceflight and the other experiment, axiom and that's that is human organism is Virgo 2. 0. And we can talk about this later because we're running out of time.

We'll find out when I get back from space, but I think it probably, corresponds to the, my expectations. It's very thorough. In depth. And you really get to know the Soyuz vehicle and Russian segment. So I'm looking forward to the realism once I get to space.

And one more question, please. What will be the first thing you do upon arrival at the station? Will you get together with your crewmates at the dinner table, or will you take a nostalgic look at the Earth? Well, for both have things to do. When we arrive, we have to safely deactivate the vehicle to make sure it will be ready for future operations.

But of course, once, time allows where the entire crew will get together, somebody will make tea, somebody will make coffee, and we will celebrate our arrival. Well, with that, thank you, everybody. Godspeed to the crew. Chairman of the Examination Commission. The backup crew of the Soyuz Ms.

29 mission is ready for the integrated Soyuz mission. Seem. Commander. Italian reporting. Commander, please sign here.

All right. Here are the questions. Just one reminder. Make your time in the simulator. Count.

Stay alert. Maintain calm. Coordination. Reporting so that the entire commission would be happy to hear what you have to report. Next you will be doing interviews.

Make sure to not overheat. They will ask you to shut off the pumps because of the noise. So monitor your condition. Hello. Good morning.

Please tell us, what's your attitude? Are you. Do you feel you're ready for the same? Well, our attitude is to get it done. We are ready as a backup crew to achieve all, objectives of these, integrated system as well as, we are ready to send off the prime crew, on their mission.

Konstantin, this is your first flight on the Soyuz. What is it very different to train for this mission. And I are happy to fly and say yes, I am very happy to fly on Soyuz. And training is different. There are, major, differences with between the vehicles.

There are many, systems that have manual controls, versus the Dragon vehicles. So I am happy. Denise, what do you think about your roommates? Is you furthering with them? I am, fortunate to have this crew.

And Dmitri and Konstantin are very experienced crew members. When they work, they work with confidence and professionalism. Thank you. Dmitry, on your last mission, you were the flight engineer, and your former commander is here. Sergei, put a copy of You're the Commander now.

Did he pass on any knowledge or experience to you? Definitely. Every mission is, training, and learning opportunity. And this is why, at some point, cosmonauts have become instructors and teach younger generations. So this is what has been happening during the mission.

Sergei was teaching me, and I was learning from him. And he is wishing me that good luck. Now, what's more difficult to fly for a year? Or to be a commander? So easy.

I think most important thing is to keep flying. We cosmonauts, to, everything that we do for the chance to fly to space. Deniz, we know that, flying a dragon is exciting. But what do astronauts think about flying on Soyuz? Is it the challenge, a test, or is it a gift of fate?

What do you think? Most astronauts fly on the Soyuz. Is it good luck, or is it, test for you? Oh, I mean, we're always grateful for any opportunity to go to space. We're trained and ready for anything, and I'm very excited for my first spaceflight.

Any other questions? We know that you have been trained, as a backup crew. And, if for some reason, you are called for the mission, will it be a surprise for you, or will you be ready? Well, of course it will be a surprise. This happens extremely rarely.

I would say once in a couple of decades. So it will definitely be a surprise. But the training is structured at this star city in such a way that the backup crew is equally ready for the mission. Thank you. Wishing you good luck at your scene and please pass for photographs.

Congratulations on completing the first day of the exam. And now you have the second name. Please tell us what you encountered at the exam yesterday. What challenges the instructors have prepared for you. Yesterday, as we worked in our integrated simulator, we had to deal with several of nominal situations with our oxygen generating system electron, our toilet, the ICU.

We responded to a false smoke detector alarm indicating a fire for the script. This was a false alarm and there was no fire, but the crew still had to respond as if it were a real emergency. Because we have to be ready for anything. And at the end of the day, we had a depressurization event in one of our modules. So we performed actions required to ensure the safety of the crew and the safe configuration of the vehicle.

How did the crew perform? Was the commander making decisions for crewmembers to follow, or was it a collective effort? On orbit, the actions of every crew member are very important, and the job of the commander is to coordinate the response, make it more effective and efficient, provide directions, and ensure real time response for the most critical events. Yesterday, the backup crew had their exam on Soyuz. Have you shared your experiences amongst the crews?

Of course, we were keen to know how did the Soyuz seem to go here yesterday? And so of course we talked and shared our impressions, comments. And we will of course take their lessons and use them in our work. Please tell us, if you have a good luck charm or a sort of a ritual that you perform before the exams to make sure all goes well. Usually we do this.

Oh, so this does bring good luck. Chairman of the Examination Commission. The backup crew of the SS 75 increment is ready for the exam on the Russian segment of the International Space Station. Commander in charge of the Russian segment, Dmitry Potato. Good luck.

Thank you. Dmitry. We see that you let Denise take the exam questions. Do you believe she brings you good luck? And yes, indeed.

We entrusted our exam fate to Denise. And yesterday's same showed that it was a good decision because she brought us good luck, even though we didn't know what was in the other exam questions. But yesterday improved that. She does have a lucky hand. To follow up what was in the exam questions yesterday and how did you perform?

Yesterday was a good same. We had a nominal launch. We docked with the station. There were a few comm failures. We also encountered some of nominal situations in the proximity zone and had to perform a manual docking.

Also during the descent we dealt with several situations requiring our response. I believe we did well. We received a good grade on the exam and most importantly, some valuable tips and advice from the Commission for additional improvements. Konstantin, have you shared your impressions of the exam with the prime crew? We had no time.

Everyone was tired. Our debrief dropped earlier than theirs, so there was no time. Deniz, This seems different from the exam. Best of luck to you. Thank you.

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