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Soyuz MS-15 crews press conference over

The Soyuz MS-15 prime and backup crews press conference took place at the Test and Training Complex of the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center (Baikonur). The cosmonauts and astronauts answered the questions of the media, as well as spoke about the plans of the coming mission to the International Space Station and new experiments onboard.

The State Commission earlier confirmed the spacecraft crew composition with the prime crew including Soyuz Commander Oleg Skripochka of Roscosmos, Flight Engineer-1 Jessica Meir of NASA, and Flight Engineer-2 Hazza Al Mansouri (UAE). The backup crew consists of Sergey Ryzhikov (Russia), Thomas Marshburn (USA) and Sultan Al Neyadi (UAE).

According to the International Space Station flight program, the crewed Soyuz MS-15 spacecraft is scheduled to lift off at 13:57 UTC on September 25, 2019 from the launch pad No.1 (Gagarin’s Start) at the Baikonur Cosmodrome. The vehicle is to dock to the ISS automatically to the Russian segment of the ISS at 19:45 UTC, on September 25, 2019.

The Soyuz MS-15 crewed spacecraft will also deliver 180 kg of cargo to the station for the Russian cosmonauts and ISS partners: a set of equipment for the American segment spacewalking activities, for the UAE spaceflight participant, as well as European Space Agency equipment.

Moreover, the cargo sets includes equipment for space experiments, medical, biological and geophysical research, life support means, symbolic activities set and personal belongings of the crew. The station crew will also receive 10 kg of fresh fruit.