WIKIARCHIVES.SPACE

In the Integration Facility at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, technicians put the final touches on the Soyuz MS-04 spacecraft before its encapsulation into the upper stage of a Soyuz booster rocket April 12. The operation took place on the 56th anniversary of the launch of Yuri Gagarin from Baikonur to become the first human to fly in space. Expedition 51 crewmembers Fyodor Yurchikhin of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) and Jack Fischer of NASA will launch April 20 on the Soyuz MS-04 spacecraft from Baikonur for a four and a half month mission on the International Space Station.