At March 13, the State Commission at the Baikonur cosmodrome approved the prime and the backup crews of the Soyuz MS-12 crew transportation spacecraft and confirmed readiness of rocket-space complex Soyuz-FG/Soyuz MS-12 and the ground infrastructure for launch under the International Space Station (ISS) program.

The prime crew consists of Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin (the crew commander), NASA astronauts Nick Haque (flight-engineer) and Christina Koch (flight engineer-2). Their approved backups are Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Skvortsov, ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano and NASA astronaut Andrew Morgan.

Upon completion of the State Commission meeting, the prime and the backup crewmembers answered questions of the Russian and foreign journalists and spoke about plans for the forthcoming expedition at a traditional pre-flight press conference.

The launch of the Soyuz MS-12 CTS with the crew of the next long-duration expedition to the ISS is scheduled for March 14, 2019 from Site No. 1 (“Gagarin’s launch pad”) of the Baikonur Cosmodrome.