MOSCOW, April 29. /TASS/. A copy of the Victory Banner is already onboard the International Space Station (ISS) as it has been delivered there at the end of March, Roscosmos space agency press service told TASS on Wednesday.
"The Victory Banner is at the International Space Station. It was delivered on March 27 by the Soyuz TMA-16M manned spacecraft with crew consisting of the commander, Roscosmos cosmonaut Gennady Padalka, flight engineers Mikhail Korniyenko from Roscosmos and Scott Kelly from NASA [National Aeronautics and Space Administration]," the space agency said.
It was earlier reported that the Victory Banner will be delivered to the ISS by the Progress M-27M cargo spacecraft launched from the Baikonur spaceport on Tuesday. After the spacecraft separated from the Soyuz-2.1a carrier rocket, it was reported that antennas of Progress’s docking system Kurs had failed to unfold. Soon it turned out that the spacecraft itself had
The Victory Banner is the official symbol of the Victory of the Soviet people against Nazi Germany during the second World War. It was raised by the Red Army soldiers on the Reichstag building in Berlin on April 30, 1945. The inscription on the banner reads: "150th Rifle, Order of Kutuzov 2nd class, Idritsa Division, 79th Rifle Corps, 3rd Shock Army, 1st Belarusian Front."
Apart from Padalka, Korniyenko and Kelly, there are currently several other astronauts at the ISS, including Russian cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov, NASA astronaut Terry Virts and European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti.