WIKIARCHIVES.SPACE

At the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia, Expedition 54-55 backup and prime crewmembers pose for pictures Dec. 4 prior to their departure for their launch site at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. From left to right are backup crewmembers Alexander Gerst of the European Space Agency, Jeanette Epps of NASA and Sergey Prokopyev of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) and prime crewmembers Norishige Kanai of the Japan Aerospace Agency (JAXA), Anton Shkaplerov of Roscosmos and Scott Tingle of NASA. Kanai, Shkaplerov and Tingle are scheduled to launch Dec. 17 on the Soyuz MS-07 spacecraft for a five-month mission on the International Space Station...