At the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia, Expedition 36/37 ESA astronaut and Flight Engineer Luca Parmitano (front row, right) signs a commemorative book at the Cosmonaut Museum, 8 May 2013. His crewmates, NASA Flight Engineer Karen Nyberg (front row, left) and Soyuz Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin (front row, centre) look on. Their backups watch in the back row, Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (left), cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin (centre) and Rick Mastracchio of NASA (right).
The crew are 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.