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Russian cosmonauts’ team gets four new members in 2020

The Cosmonaut Training Center told TASS in August that 1,984 applications had been filed and 59 candidates had been invited to take part in the face-to-face selection stage

© Alexandr Sherbak/TASS

MOSCOW, December 29. /TASS/. Four new members joined the Russian cosmonauts’ team in 2020, Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center Chief Pavel Vlasov announced on Tuesday.

"At the end of the year, four new members joined the team. I wish them success on the difficult way of training for space flights," he said in his New Year congratulation posted on the Center’s website.

The new campaign for recruiting new members into the Russian cosmonauts’ team kicked off on June 3, 2019. It was earlier planned that the face-to-face selection stage would be completed by October. Later, the Cosmonaut Training Center told TASS that the contest commission planned to extend the selection procedure until December.

The Cosmonaut Training Center told TASS in August that 1,984 applications had been filed and 59 candidates had been invited to take part in the face-to-face selection stage. Russia’s State Space Corporation Roscosmos completed accepting applications for participation in the selection procedure in June. Roscosmos said that 156 contenders had submitted a full package of documents, including 123 men and 33 women.

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