Russian cosmonaut Anna Kikina departed to Houston for training

In an exclusive interview with a Russian media Rossiyskaya Gazeta, Dmitry Rogozin, Director General of the Roscosmos State Corporation, confirmed: "Until at least 2024, we are working on a regular basis according to all our plans. They do not change. Cross flights add more confidence in the safety of the station: we understand the technology of controlling the American ship, the Americans know the technology of controlling ours. In principle, this area of ​​cooperation is useful. Cosmonaut Anna Kikina flew to NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston (USA) to get acquainted with the structure of the modules of the American segment of the ISS and the Crew Dragon spacecraft, the crew of which she can enter. For our part, we are not destroying anything and are keeping the preliminary agreements, although we continue to wait for the government's decision on the implementation of the cross-flight program."

As previously planned, today the only woman in the Russian cosmonaut corps will fly on the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station in the fall of 2022 on a Crew-5 mission, and the American Astronaut Frank Rubio will fly on the Russian Soyuz.

NASA astronaut Frank Rubio, photo; NASA

Spaceflight Preparations

Cosmonaut Anna kikina training at GCTC

Anna Yurievna Kikina was trained in the group of specialization and improvement at the Soyuz TPK and ISS Russian Segment at StarCity, from 2014 to 2021

In 2017, she took part in the SIRIUS international isolation experiment as flight engineer-1, which simulates a flight to the Moon. In the course of the experiment, the docking of the promising Russian Federation spacecraft with the upper stage in Earth orbit was simulated and the remote control of the lunar rover was simulated using a virtual reality helmet. In addition, the spacesuits for the new Federation ship were tested.

Back-up Crew of Exp-67: Sergei Valeriyevich Prokopyev, Dmitri Alexandrovich Petelin and Anna Yuryevna Kikina.

Since May 2021, he has been undergoing training as part of the ISS-67 backup crew as a Soyuz MS flight engineer (since January 2022 - as a Soyuz MS flight engineer-2) and an ISS flight engineer.

SpaceX Crew-5 planned manifest; NASA Astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada will be the Commander and Pilot of Crew Dragon, JAXA Veteran Astronaut; Koichi Wakata and Russian Cosmonaut; Anna Kikina are mission specialists.