Jun, 08 2001 Made in Pravda.ru Pravda.ru comes forward with working out conceptions and creating new corporative representative sites, as well as with promotion of new products in the Net. More in detail Accidents CIS Companies ... About Pravda.RU:World:More in detail AMERICAN ASTRONAUT FRANK CALBERTSON WINDS UP RUSSIAN PART OF PRE-LAUNCH PREPARATION PROGRAMME American astronaut Frank Calbertson, 52, commander of the 3rd long-duration expedition to the International Space Station, had wound up the Russian programme of preparations for the space flight. He will go on it with cosmonauts Vladimir Dezhurov and Mikhail Tyurin. Calbertson said this on Thursday at a meeting with journalists at the Star City (a space center near Moscow). He said that the pre-flight training sessions passed together with the Russian cosmonauts at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center. The American astronaut said in an interview with the RIA Novosti correspondent that, when he was 12, Gagarin's flight gave him a turn. I could not even dream that some day I would go to space with Russian cosmonauts, he said. To turn his dream into reality Frank had to work very hard. First, he graduated from the aerospace engineering department of the Naval Academy and got the bachelor degree. Then he was a test pilot and flew 40 kinds of aircraft, getting 5,000 flying hours. In May 1984 he passed exams for a NASA astronaut team. Made two space flights in 1990 and 1993. American astronaut Peggy Whitson, 42, has entered the back-up team of this expedition and is ready to a maiden space flight. | |
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