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One day in the stay of the ISS-65 crews at Baikonur

Prior to space launches at Baikonur, journalists usually had an opportunity to communicate with the crews of the upcoming expedition to the International Space Station, and were invited to open training sessions. For over a year now, the epidemiological situation has imposed new formats or restrictions. Now, a week before the launch, photographers and cameramen working at the space industry enterprises offer the public a glimpse of one day in the life of the ISS-65 crews.

Currently, the prime crew of Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Novitsky, Pyotr Dubrov and NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei are preparing for the flight. Roscosmos cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov, Oleg Artemyev and NASA astronaut Anne McClain became their stand-ins. On April 3, 2021, they trained manual rendezvous of the Soyuz MS spacecraft with the International Space Station at a multipurpose functional stand, as well as studying onboard documentation of the Soyuz MS-18 crewed spacecraft.

While preparing for the space flight factors, the crews train on Coriolis acceleration chairs and participate in hemodynamic training on a tilt table in accordance with a certain scheme developed at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center. Much attention is paid to physical training: supervised by doctors, cosmonauts and astronauts train on a treadmill and a bicycle ergometer, strength simulators, do general physical training. During their free time, they play chess, checkers, table tennis, darts and billiards.

The crews strictly follow preflight traditions, one of which is associated with the Cosmonauts Alley. The crewmember going to space for the first time plants a tree while experienced cosmonauts and astronauts participate in the symbolic watering of their trees, planted prior to their first launches.