WIKIARCHIVES.SPACE

At their Cosmonaut Hotel crew quarters in Baikonur, Kazakhstan, Expedition 52-53 backup crewmembers Norishige Kanai of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA, left), Alexander Misurkin of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos, center) and Mark Vande Hei of NASA (right) accept flowers during a traditional flag-raising ceremony July 18. They are serving as backups to Randy Bresnik of NASA, Sergey Ryazanskiy of Roscosmos and Paolo Nespoli of the European Space Agency, who will launch July 28 on the Soyuz MS-05 spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome for a five-month mission on the International Space Station.