Russia expands its cosmonaut pool
The Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) announced last week the selection of one new cosmonaut and up to five new cosmonaut candidates, with the potential for choosing more candidates in a future open contest. The Roscosmos press release provides more details below: The Number of Cosmonaut Candidates will Increase On Oct. 12, Interagency Board chaired by Roscosmos Head Anatoly Perminov qualified Oleg Artemiev as test cosmonaut of RSC-Energia. The Board also recommended to appoint Alexey Khomenchuk (GCTC), Denis Matveev (GCTC), Sergey Prokopiev (Aviation Corps) as cosmonaut candidates, and ordered GCTC to arrange their spaceflight training as test cosmonauts. RSC-Energia’s Sviatoslav Morozov and Ivan Vagner are also planned to go through the training as cosmonaut candidates. GCTC Chief Sergey Krikalev offered to have an open contest to select new cosmonauts. He stated that not only GCTC and Energia shall provide their cosmonaut candidates, but also other companies of t