commander Kenneth Ham shake hands at the farewell ceremony. In 1996 Kotov was selected as a cosmonaut candidate by the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center (GCTC). From June 1996 to March 1998, he completed a course of basic training for spaceflight. In March 1998, he received a test-cosmonaut qualification. Since July 1998, he has been a cosmonaut-researcher and test-cosmonaut of the Cosmonaut Office. From May–August 1998, he trained for a flight on the Soyuz and the Mir station as a backup crewmember to the Mir-26 mission. Since October 1998, he participated in advanced training for ISS flights. He served as a flight engineer and Soyuz commander on the ISS-6 and ISS-13 backup crews. From February–October 1999, Kotov served as a Representative of GCTC at the Johnson Space Center. During 2001–2002 he worked as a CAPCOM for Expedition-3 and 4 in
mission control center, Moscow and Moscow Support Group in the Mission Control Center at Houston. In 2004 he became Chief of the CAPCOM Branch in the Cosmonaut Office.
Expedition 15 He was a member (Flight Engineer) of the ISS
Expedition 15, that launched on 7 April 2007 from
Baikonur Cosmodrome, aboard
Soyuz TMA-10 spacecraft, together with
Fyodor Yurchikhin and space tourist
Charles Simonyi. On October 21, Kotov returned to Earth inside the Soyuz TMA-10 capsule after spending 196 days and 17 hours in space. The TMA-10 spacecraft undocked from the ISS at 07:14 UTC on October 21, and deorbit occurred at 09:47. During
atmospheric re-entry, the spacecraft transitioned to a
ballistic reentry, resulting in it landing west of
Arkalyk, approximately northwest of the intended
Kazakhstan landing site.
Expedition 22/23 Kotov commanded
Soyuz TMA-17 and was assigned to
Expedition 22 as a Flight Engineer and
Expedition 23 as the Commander aboard the
International Space Station. On 1 May 2010 Kotov manually flew the final 1 km of the incoming
Progress M-05M spacecraft to the ISS after it failed to return to the proper docking orientation following a series of thruster firings. Kotov using the station's Telerobotically Operated Rendezvous Unit (TORU) system took control and guided the spacecraft to successfully dock with the ISS. Later Russian Mission Control announced that Kotov's Progress M-05M rendezvous work may have set a new record. Kotov returned to Earth on 2 June 2010 aboard the Soyuz TMA-17 spacecraft. The Soyuz capsule touched down at about 3:25 UTC on the central steppes of Kazakhstan.
Expedition 37/38 Kotov launched on
Soyuz TMA-10M on 25 September 2013, with Russian cosmonaut Sergey Ryazansky and American astronaut
Michael Hopkins joined Expedition 37 as a Flight Engineer. On 7 November Kotov and rest of the five Expedition 37 crew members were joined by new Expedition 38 flight engineers,
Mikhail Tyurin,
Koichi Wakata and
Rick Mastracchio. This was first time since October 2009 that nine people resided on the space station without the presence of a space shuttle. Soon after Kotov became the station commander for the second time since Expedition 23 in 2010. Kotov and cosmonaut Ryazansky made history after they took an Olympic torch for a spacewalk for the first time ever on 9 November 2013. Kotov returned to Earth on 11 March 2014 after staying at the ISS for 166 days.
Spacewalks On 30 May 2007 at 19:05 GMT, accompanied by Fyodor Yurchikhin, Kotov began his first
spacewalk, lasting 5 hours and 25 minutes, during which they installed protective panels to shield the ISS from space debris. On 6 June 2007 Kotov performed his second spacewalk from the
Pirs docking compartment airlock. Along with Yurchikhin, Kotov installed a section of Ethernet cable on the
Zarya module, installed additional Service Module Debris Protection (SMDP) panels on
Zvezda, and deployed a Russian scientific experiment. The two cosmonauts returned to the ISS at 4:00 p.m. EDT to wound up the 5 hours, 37 minutes spacewalk. On 14 January 2010 Kotov again ventured outside the ISS with fellow Russian cosmonaut
Maksim Surayev to begin his third spacewalk. The spacewalking duo connected cables between the
Poisk and
Zvezda modules, installed docking targets and Kurs aerials and attached additional handrails to exit hatches. The spacewalk lasted 5 hours and 44 minutes. On 27 January 2014, Kotov did perform his sixth spacewalk outside the ISS with cosmonaut Ryazansky. The cosmonauts completed work that could not be finished up during their last spacewalk on December 27. After exiting the Pirs docking compartment, the two cosmonauts arrived at the outside of the Zvezda service module. They then installed a high resolution camera and a medium resolution camera to capture Earth imagery, however the medium resolution camera again experienced telemetry issues. Kotov and Ryazansky also removed a cassette container attached to the Pirs docking compartment, installed earlier as part of a materials exposure experiment. They also removed a worksite interface adapter attached to a portable data grapple fixture on the Zarya module to ensure that future operations with the Canadarm2 robotic arm will not be disrupted. The spacewalk marked the fourth EVA conducted during the Expedition 38 and lasted six hours and eight minutes. == References ==