Expedition 50-51 Crew Departs for Kazakh Launch Site

Expedition 50-51 Soyuz Commander Oleg Novitskiy of Roscosmos and Flight Engineers Peggy Whitson of NASA and Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency along with their backups, Fyodor Yurchikhin of Roscosmos, Jack Fischer of NASA and Paolo Nespoli of the European Space Agency participated in traditional ceremonies at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia, outside Moscow Nov. 1. Afterward, they departed for the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to complete their training for the launch of Novitskiy, Whitson and Pesquet on the Soyuz MS-03 spacecraft Nov. 18, Kazakh time, for a five-month mission on the International Space Station.