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New Crew in Final Preps Before Historic July 20 Launch

Expedition 60 crewmembers aboard a Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center aircraft
Expedition 60 crewmembers (from left) Drew Morgan, Alexander Skvortsov and Luca Parmitano affix a crew insignia sticker to the hull of the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center aircraft as they flew to their training base in Kazakhstan July 4.

The next crew to liftoff to the International Space Station arrived at the Baikonur Cosmodrome launch site on the U.S. Independence Day awaiting a historic July 20 liftoff.

New Expedition 60 crewmates Andrew Morgan, Luca Parmitano and Alexander Skvortsov are in final mission preparations in Kazakhstan. The trio arrived July 4 counting down to a July 20 launch to the orbiting lab 50 years to the date NASA landed humans on the Moon for the first time.

Morgan is going to space for the first time and will meet his fellow Class of 2013 NASA astronaut members, Christina Koch and Nick Hague, who have been at the station since March. Parmitano is on his second mission. Skvortsov, who is leading the mission aboard the Soyuz MS-13 spacecraft, is making his third visit to the space station.

Back aboard the station, the three orbiting Expedition 60 crewmembers continued science and maintenance duties. Koch sampled the station’s life support system for microbes while Hague serviced a specialized science furnace. Ovchinin checked on Russian station systems and monitored a radiation exposure study.