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At the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia, Expedition 44/45 Soyuz Commander Oleg Kononenko of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) signs in for the first of two days of qualification exams May 6 as his crewmates, Kjell Lindgren of NASA (left) and Kimya Yui of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (right), look on. The trio is preparing for launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on May 27, Kazakh time, in the Soyuz TMA-17M spacecraft to begin a five and a half month mission to the International Space Station.