MOSCOW, August 29. /TASS/. The basic and backup crews of the 70th and 71st expeditions to the International Space Station (ISS) arrived at the Baikonur Cosmodrome to prepare for spaceflight, Russia’s State Space Corporation Roscosmos announced on Tuesday.
"The basic and backup crews of the ISS Expedition 70/71 landed at Krainiy Airport in the town of Baikonur. They were received by the heads of the Yuzhny space center, a branch of the Roscosmos Center for the Operation of Ground-Based Space Infrastructure Facilities and the administrations of the town of Baikonur and space industry enterprises," Roscosmos said in a statement.
In the coming two weeks, the crews will undergo a set of training sessions, exercises and instructions and some medical check-ups, it said.
The basic crew of the 70th and 71st space expeditions to the orbital outpost comprises Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolay Chub and NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara. Their backup teammates are Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin and Tracy Dyson.
The launch of the Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft to deliver the ISS Expedition 70/71 crew to the space station is scheduled for September 15 this year.
NASA astronaut O’Hara will return to Earth aboard the Soyuz MS-24 spaceship in the spring of 2024 while the space mission of Kononenko and Chub will last until September next year. Upon their mission completion, the Russian cosmonauts will return to Earth aboard the Soyuz MS-25 spacecraft. Kononenko may become the Earth’s first human to spend over 1,000 days in space as part of his year-long expedition.
Roscosmos announced on July 15, 2022 that it had signed a deal with NASA on seat swap flights by Russian cosmonauts and American astronauts to the orbital outpost. Under the deal, Russian cosmonauts will perform three spaceflights to the ISS aboard US spaceships. Roscosmos announced in March this year that the seat swap flight program had been expanded by one more mission.