The possibility of an extended period with three residents on the station — and just one U.S. astronaut — prompted managers to train the original Soyuz MS-16 crew on systems inside the U.S. segment of the outpost.Tikhonov trained to use NASA’s spacesuits in case he needed to join Cassidy on a spacewalk performing repairs or maintenance outside the space station. And Babkin was certified to operate the station’s Canadian-built robotic arm.Megan Sumner, a NASA spokesperson, said Wednesday that Ivanishin and Vagner will not travel to the Johnson Space Center in Houston for additional training before their April 9 launch. Cassidy will head to Russia later this month to join his new Russian crewmates for final training and familiarization with the Soyuz spacecraft, before heading to the Baikonur Cosmodrome in late March for launch preparations.Cassidy was previously a crewmate of Ivanishin and Vagner on the Soyuz MS-16 backup crew before he was elevated to the prime crew last year to replace a Japanese astronaut. During that time, Sumner said Cassidy conducted U.S. spacesuit and spacewalk training with Ivanishin, including training inside NASA’s Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
The 1st Kibo-RPC on-orbit event is scheduled for September 2020. The winners of the Preliminary Round in each country can participate in the final round in the on-orbit event, which will be connected with the JAXA Tsukuba Space Center. As part of the preparation for Kibo-RPC, JAXA gave an overview of Kibo-RPC to two NASA astronauts, Astronaut Christopher John Cassidy and Astronaut Stephen Bowen.