Russia: International Space Station Crew 100 Per Cent Ready

Excerpt from report by Russian news agency ITAR-TASS

Zvezdnyy Gorodok, (Moscow Region), 23 September: The crew of the 10th main expedition to the International Space Station [ISS] have completed their training for the flight with excellent results. This was the verdict of an interdepartmental commission today following the cosmonauts’ qualifying assessments, the cosmonauts’ training centre told an ITAR-TASS correspondent. “Russia’s Salizhan Sharipov and America’s Leroy Chiao are 100 per cent ready for the flight,” said a spokesman for the training centre.

Over two days at the training centre in Zvezdnyy Gorodok near Moscow, Sharipov and Chiao, along with their backups Valeriy Tokarev and William McArthur, showed off their skills on simulators of the Russian section of the ISS and the Soyuz TMA manned spacecraft. Lt- Col Yuriy Shagrin of the Russian Space Troops, who is flying to the ISS on a nine-day mission, also took the test alongside the main crew.

[Passage omitted]

Yuriy Shagrin will return to Earth on 20 October with Gennadiy Padalka and Michael Fincke who have been working on the station since April. “The re-entry has been moved from 21 October to 20 October,” official representative of the Russian Federal Space Agency Vyacheslav Davidenko announced today.

[At 0757 gmt in a further ITAR-TASS report gave reasons for the change of date. "The re-entry will be carried out during daylight hours to enable the search and rescue helicopters and planes to locate the re-entry capsule from the air. However in October in Kazakhstan with every day darkness falls earlier and earlier," Davidenko explained.]