WIKIARCHIVES.SPACE

During a tour of the city of Baikonur, Kazakhstan, the Expedition 46-47 backup crewmembers posed for pictures Dec. 2 in front of a statue of Yuri Gagarin, the first human to fly in space. From left to right are Kate Rubins of NASA, Anatoly Ivanishin of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) and Takuya Onishi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). They are serving as backups to the prime crewmembers, Tim Kopra of NASA, Yuri Malenchenko of Roscosmos and Tim Peake of the European Space Agency, who will launch on Dec. 15 on the Soyuz TMA-19M spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome for a six-month mission on the International Space Station.