Published on July 18, 2017
At their Cosmonaut Hotel crew quarters in Baikonur, Kazakhstan, Expedition 50-51 Soyuz Commander Oleg Novitskiy of Roscosmos and Flight Engineers Peggy Whitson of NASA and Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency along with their backups, Fyodor Yurchikhin of Roscosmos, Jack Fischer of NASA and Paolo Nespoli of the European Space Agency appeared before the Russian State Commission Nov. 16. The commission gave its final approval for the launch of Novitskiy, Whitson and Pesquet to the International Space Station Nov. 18, Kazakh time, in their Soyuz MS-03 spacecraft for a five-month mission. The crew members followed the State Commission meeting with a final prelaunch news conference.
