Attending the pre-flight press conference at the Cosmonaut hotel where crew members stay before the launch of any Soyuz mission.
154- The hotel entrance is rather bland :
155- Next to the hotel, there is the Cosmonauts alley where every astronaut/cosmonaut departing from Baikonur Cosmodrome has to plant a tree. It's like a tradition :
156- The Gagarin's tree :
157- Some tress have been planted a lot more recently like the one of French spationaut Thomas Pesquet who stayed in the ISS in 2016-2017 :
158- The conference room. Astronauts have to stay behind a glass because before the flight they are in quarantine :
159- The crew members of the Soyuz MS-05 mission and their backup crew. From left to right : Paolo Nespoli (Italian, ESA), Randy Bresnik (American, NASA), Sergey Ryazansky (Russian, Roscosmos), Alexander Misurkin (Russian, Roscosmos), Mark Vande Hei (American, NASA) and Norishige Kanai (Japanese, JAXA).
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A video I edited from the clips I shot during the press conference. English, Russian and Italian were spoken during the conference which lasted for about one hour :
• Video Link