MOSCOW, July 10. /TASS/. An inter-departmental commission recommended at a meeting in the Gagarin Cosmonauts Training Center, in Star City near Moscow on Monday to approve the primary and backup crews for a flight to the International Space Station (ISS), a spokesperson for the center told TASS.

"A decision has been made to approve the crews for continuing the pre-flight training at the Baikonur spaceport," a spokesperson said.

The primary crew of the Soyuz MS-05 spacecraft consists of Russian cosmonaut Sergey Ryazansky, NASA astronaut Randolph Bresnik and astronaut of the European Space Agency (ESA) Paolo Nespoli.

The backup crew brings together Russian cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin, NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei and Japanese astronaut Norishige Kanai. The crews are due to be approved by a state commission at the Baikonur spaceport in Kazakhstan a day before the launch set for July 28.

The commission’s meeting was held after two-day tests during which the cosmonauts and astronauts successfully managed all contingency emergency situations onboard precise replicas of a Russian segment of the ISS and the Soyuz MS spacecraft. They had been also approved for the flight by a medical commission.

Ryazansky and Bresnik will fly to the ISS for a second time, while Nespoli will be heading for his third spaceflight, which is due to last for 139 days.