Published on February 12, 2017
At the Baikonur Cosmodrome in 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 participated in their final fit checks in the Soyuz MS-03 spacecraft Nov. 11 as they prepare for the launch of Novitskiy, Whitson and Pesquet Nov. 18, Kazakh time for a five-month mission on the International Space Station.