At the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia, ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano signs in for the start of final qualification training, 30 April 2013. His crewmates, NASA Flight Engineer Karen Nyberg (left, partially obscured) and Soyuz Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin, look on.
The crew is preparing for their launch, 29 May 2013, Kazakh time, in the Soyuz TMA-09M spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan for a long-duration mission to the International Space Station.