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Expedition 44/45 backup crew members

Expedition 44/45 backup crew members
Expedition 44/45 backup crew members at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia.

At the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia, Expedition 44/45 backup crew members Timothy Peake of the European Space Agency, Yuri Malenchenko of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) and Timothy Kopra of NASA pay homage to Yuri Gagarin, the first human to fly in space, during a traditional ceremony July 8 in which they laid flowers at his statue. The prime crew members, Kjell Lindgren of NASA, Oleg Kononenko of Roscosmos and Kimiya Yui of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency also laid flowers during the ceremony. Lindgren, Kononenko and Yui will launch on their Soyuz TMA-17M spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan July 23 for a five-month mission on the International Space Station. NASA/Seth Marcantel