Engineer Timothy Kopra signs in for the first of two days of qualification exams.

At the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia, Expedition 44/45 backup Flight Engineer Timothy Kopra of NASA signs in for the first of two days of qualification exams May 6 as his crewmates, Yuri Malenchenko of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos, center) and Timothy Peake of the European Space Agency (left) look on. They are the backups to the prime crew --- Kjell Lindgren of NASA, Oleg Kononenko of Roscosmos and Kimya Yui of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency --- who are in the final stages of training for launch May 27, Kazakh time, in the Soyuz TMA-17M spacecraft to begin a five and a half month mission to the International Space Station. Photo credit: NASA/Seth Marcantel