Flight attendant and surgeon: names of two Belarusian female cosmonauts became known

Sending to the ISS is planned on the Russian Soyuz MS-25 spacecraft in March next year

Two contenders for a flight into space as part of the crew of the Soyuz MS-25 spacecraft in 2024 were selected by the Belarusian side. As it became known to “MK”, ​​further preparation for the flight at the Cosmonaut Training Center. Gagarin will be continued by Belavia flight attendant Marina Vasilevskaya and pediatric surgeon of the Republican Scientific and Practical Center for Pediatric Surgery Anastasia Lenkova. One – as the main contender, the other – as an understudy.

Russian and Belarusian presidents Vladimir Putin and Alexander Lukashenko agreed on the flight of a Belarusian cosmonaut as part of a Russian crew on April 12 last year at the Vostochny cosmodrome. Moreover, it was decided to send a Belarusian woman into space.

By December 2022, applicants for the flight arrived at the Cosmonaut Training Center, in Star City, to be selected. Alexander Lukashenko personally visited them during training on December 24. In the presence of the head of the Belarusian state, one of the candidates did what professional cosmonauts do – they were tested with eight overloads in a centrifuge.

Then, in December, six representatives of the fair sex were selected, who could apply for a flight. The Special Medical Commission declared fit to fly: Marina Vasilevskaya and Victoria Fidrus, flight attendants of the Belavia airline, state forensic expert from the Brest region Daria Mikhnyuk, obstetrician-gynecologist from Baranovichi Olga Gerasimova, pediatric surgeon of the Republican Scientific and Practical Center for Pediatric Surgery Anastasia Lenkova and junior researcher of the Institute of Physics – Organic Chemistry National Academy of Sciences of Belarus Olga Mastitskaya.

The names of two lucky contenders from the entire list above (they will remain contenders until one of them is approved by a crew member) became known the other day. Marina Vasilevskaya and Anastasia Lenkova, according to preliminary information, which may be further refined, will go into space on the Soyuz MS-25 spacecraft in March 2024. In terms of timing, the launch of the ship had to be slightly shifted due to an emergency with the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft and the need to send an extraordinary Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft to the ISS in February in automatic mode.

The next Russian spacecraft to launch into orbit in September will be the Soyuz MS-24 carrying Oleg Kononenko, Nikolai Chub and NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara. The Belarusian woman will be preparing for the flight with Russian cosmonaut Alexei Ovchinin. The other day it became known that our other cosmonaut of Belarusian origin, Oleg Novitsky, was recently summoned to Minsk for a conversation by Alexander Grigoryevich himself. True, the topic of the conversation is unknown.

As for what a Belarusian girl will do on board the Russian segment of the ISS during a short period of visiting the ISS (about 10 days), the head of the Cosmonaut Training Center Maxim Kharlamov revealed a little to Interfax the other day. He also said that most of the training program for a representative from Belarus will be different from the training of actress Yulia Peresild. She, according to him, will be more scientific.