Marina Vasilevskaya is part of the main crew, and Anastasia Lenkova is part of the backup crew
The Cosmonaut Training Center named after Yu.A. Gagarin continues to train Marina Vasilevskaya and Anastasia Lenkova from Belarus. The press service of Roscosmos spoke about the past important stage
Under the guidance of TsPK instructors, the girls completed two training cycles in zero-gravity mode on an Il-76MDK laboratory aircraft. The first flight was an introductory flight – the body needs time to adapt to weightlessness, which lasts just over 20 seconds, and g-forces of two units.
To achieve the desired effect, at an altitude of 6 to 9 km, pilots perform a “slide” figure. Those in the cabin lift off the floor and in this state perform various exercises: moving along the plane and from side to side, transferring cargo, and practicing body orientation skills in space. There are up to ten such “slides” per 1.5-hour flight.
cosmonauts from Belarus completed training in zero-gravity
At the next training session, the tasks became more complicated: additional work was done on putting on spacesuits (there are three modes of short-term weightlessness for this, that is, about a minute), moving in them, and moving cargo.
The CPC instructors noted that the space flight participants were able to learn a lot and do a large amount of work during two training sessions on the laboratory aircraft. They also noticed that the Belarusian space flight participants quickly adapted to the cyclical conditions of short-term weightlessness and overloads; they had well-developed coordination of movements and orientation in space.
Marina Vasilevskaya is part of the main crew of the 21st visiting expedition to the ISS along with Oleg Novitsky and Tracy Dyson, Anastasia Lenkova is part of the backup crew, along with Ivan Vagner and Donald Pettit. Oleg Novitsky and Marina Vasilevskaya will spend 12 days on the ISS and return to Earth on the Soyuz MS-24 together with NASA astronauts Loral O’Hara, and Tracy Dyson will continue the flight. Departure is scheduled for March 2024.
