The crew of Soyuz TMA-03M had their official welcome back ceremony yesterday. Don Pettit couldn’t make it as he was at a congress meeting in Washington. They laid flowers at Yuri Gagarin’s statue and had the traditional Russian bread and salt welcome. The last picture is Kuipers’ wife getting flowers from Sergei Krikalev, now head of the training centre. I think its a nice gesture that the wives get something after 6 months without their husbands.

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The landing of Soyuz TMA-03M

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Oleg, Andre and Don are all out now. They’re not really showing Don, so he might not be feeling okay. Roscosmos head, Vladimir Popovkin is also there.

Currently on the ISS, the Expedition 31 crew members: Joe Acaba (NASA), Don Pettit (NASA), Gennady Padalka, Oleg Kononenko, Sergei Revin and Andre Kuipers (ESA). 

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Oleg Kononenko took a tour of the ISS with a fisheye lens. Everything looks a lot bigger!

(Roscosmos)

fuckyeahspaceexploration:

Cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko

Oleg Kononenko performs removal and replacement of the KVD Pressure Equalization Valve (PEV) in the transfer compartment between the Zarya Functional Cargo Block (FGB) and the Zvezda Service Module of the International Space Station.

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Russian cosmonauts Anatoli Ivanishin, Oleg Kononenko and Anton Shkaplerov voted in the Russian presidential election today from space. Like the last election, they relayed their choice over the phone, then their ballot was filled out for them and dropped in the box.

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Some more scenes from the spacewalk on Feb 16 with Anton Shkaplerov and Oleg Kononenko.

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Anton Shkaplerov and Oleg Kononenko checking out Robonaut last week.

(Source: 1, 2)

Anton Shkaplerov and Oleg Kononenko during their spacewalk last Thursday.

(From Andre Kuipers’ Flickr)

Oleg Kononenko and Anton Shkaplerov work with extravehicular activity (EVA) hardware in the Zvezda Service Module of the International Space Station in preparation for their EVA scheduled for Feb. 16, 2012.

(Source: 1, 2)

Oleg Kononenko works with the KPT-21 PK-3+ Plasma Crystal-3+ (Plazmennyi-Kristall-3 plus) Telescience payload in the Poisk Mini-Research Module 2 (MRM2) of the International Space Station.

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124daisies:

Christmas Day in space - Expedition 30, 25 December 2011

A little late, but these guys get a pass.

All six are all aboard now.