STAR CITY /Moscow Region/, June 23. /TASS/. TASS Director General Andrey Kondrashov has presented cosmonaut Anna Kikina with a TASS special correspondent certificate in the presence of Yury Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center Head, cosmonaut squad commander and Hero of Russia Oleg Kononenko, making her the eighth TASS special correspondent and the first female correspondent as part of the TASS on the International Space Station project.
"We have a very symbolic and responsible mission – to serve as the main provider of news for our country’s leading news agency, TASS. I myself took part in this work and greatly enjoyed writing articles. The entire country will rely on your reports," Kononenko said.
Kikina will travel to the ISS together with cosmonaut Pyotr Dubrov and astronaut Anil Menon on July 14 aboard the Soyuz MS-29 spacecraft. This will be the second spaceflight of her career.
"Dear Anna Yuryevna! TASS has always been proud to be the only news agency in the world with its own bureau aboard the ISS in outer space," Kondrashov noted. "Whenever possible, we receive messages, photographs, and impressions from the ISS from our special correspondents – real cosmonauts – directly to our news feed. You will be the second female cosmonaut to venture into outer space. We are very interested in your firsthand account after you witness this great miracle of nature. TASS has always had professional correspondents in orbit, but never one quite like this. This will be journalism with a female perspective."
Kikina thanked Kondrashov and Kononenko for their trust.
About TASS bureau on ISS
In 2021, TASS and Roscosmos signed a cooperation memorandum under which the agency opened a bureau aboard the ISS. Cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin became TASS’s first special correspondent, followed by Oleg Artemyev, Dmitry Petelin, Oleg Kononenko, Ivan Vagner, and Alexey Zubritsky, with Sergey Kud-Sverchkov next in line.
The public can access exclusive text, photo, and video content produced by TASS special correspondents on the ISS. A dedicated section for the project has been launched on the agency’s website, while materials from the space correspondents are also shared across TASS social media platforms.