MOSCOW -- Three sets of cosmonaut flight crews have passed their final exams training for a possible emergency mission to the Russian space station Mir, Gagarin Cosmonauts Training Center officials announced on Thursday.
The cosmonauts would fly to the aging outpost only if a Progress cargo spacecraft scheduled for launch on January 18 wasn't able to properly dock to the station, if the station lost its ability to control its orientation or if the station does not respond to commands from the Mission Control Center in Korolev.
In each case, the emergency crew would be needed to correct the situation so that Mir can be safely deorbited into Earth's atmosphere as planned in late February.
The primary emergency crew consists of Gennady Padalka (mission commander) and Nikolai Budarin (flight engineer).
The backup crew is composed of Salizhan Sharipov (mission commander) and Pavel Vinogradov (flight engineer).
There is also a reserve crew that consists of Talgat Musabayev (mission commander) and Yuri Baturin (flight engineer). They will go to Mir if, for some reason, the other two crews are unable to fly.
Padalka is confident that if he and Budarin have fly to the station they will have a successful mission.
"The most difficult part of the flight will be the manual docking. But this is something that every Russian cosmonaut is trained to do. There is nothing unusual in this procedure," Padalka told SPACE.com.
"Whatever malfunction happens onboard the station, no spacewalk or internal dismantling of the station will be necessary," added Vinogradov. "The station will come down in one piece in any case."
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