Star pupils

Crew member Maksim Suraev told RT that the space team is ready for the flight.

“The last exams are the most difficult because you need to show all your skills to the instructors and those people preparing the flight. They put a lot of nominal situations and they check your reaction, how you deal with these situations. The last question they ask is: ‘Are you ready or not?’”

Suraev said he is sure the team is ready because they passed the tests with excellent marks.

The founder of Cirque du Soleil and space tourist, Guy Laliberte, shared with RT that for him the most difficult was the medical training on the so-called “rotating chair”.

“It consists of sitting on a special chair making rotating. This guy [pointing at Maksim Suraev] is sleeping when he is doing that but it was very difficult for me.”

Laliberte said the whole training program was amazing and well done, and became for him a very serious lifetime experience, physically and academically.

Maksim Suraev said the expedition will have really busy time. They will have three cargo vehicles arriving at the station, they will attach a new module to the Russian segment of the station and they will also relocate Russian Soyuz vehicle docked to the station. Two American shuttles will arrive to the ISS during their mission. But their main job will consist of conducting scientific experiments – 48 of them, to be exact.

Space tourist Guy Laliberte will not only satisfy his dream of going to space, he will also be on a personal philanthropic and politic-social mission. On October 9, he will produce the first ever entertainment production performed in space, live on the Internet and certain broadcasting channels.

Laliberte promised to maximize every minute of his journey spending time in the company of eight cosmonauts and astronauts to be able to understand what they are doing and helping them if possible. He believes that the time he’ll spend just looking at the planet Earth and stars will be fantastic.