It will be also be in roughly the same orbit as the Russian space station Mir.
He was headed to the Russian Space Station, Mir, where he would spend spend five months in orbit.
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Usachev could have an easier time recovering, having spent two long-duration missions on the retired Russian space station Mir.
Lake Vostok was discovered in the 1970s by an international team of scientists, including researchers from the Russian Vostok station in Antarctica.
Usachev has experience dealing with the consequences of a long-term stay in space, having spent two long-duration missions on the retired Russian space station Mir.
Two of the other five U.S. astronauts who have lived aboard the Russian space station told CNN they are planning to leave the space agency within six months.
"You'd like the radiation exposure to be lower, but it is what it is, " said Dr. Norm Thagard, the first American to fly on the Russian space station Mir, who had no role in the research.
"He has a contract, he is the manager of the national side, and while his contract is in force no one can consider him as a candidate for another post, " Russian Football Union president Vitaly Mutko told a Russian radio station.
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Former astronaut Jerry Linenger, who was aboard the Russian space station Mir during a dangerous fire in 1997, told the Associated Press news agency that a loss of communication with the ground "is not a terrible thing" as long as there is no crisis going on.
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American astronaut visitations to the Russian MIR space station extended this spirit of cooperation and diplomacy.
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The team will fly him to the Russian-run Novolazarevskaya Station (Novo), an Antarctic research station, and from there to Cape Town on Wednesday evening.
Then on Monday, crew members Hadfield, Marshburn and Roman Romanenko will undock their Russian Soyuz from the station and head back to Earth for a planned 10:31pm EDT landing in Kazakhstan.
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KOROLYOV, Russia (Reuters) -- A Russian space capsule docked with the orbiting station Mir on Monday to allow a joint Russian-French-Slovak crew to embark on what could be the last mission to the aging craft.
On Sunday at 3:40pm EDT, Commander Chris Hadfield will hand command of the Space Station over to Russian Cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov.
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UrtheCast will supply video data and imagery of Earth collected by two HD cameras on the Russian module of the Space Station.
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They attached new debris shields to the hull of the station's Russian segment, added support struts to an airlock ladder and retrieved a biological sample canister.
During stints at companies like Inmarsat (the U.K. satellite outfit), Lockheed or Boeing, students might study Nigerian satellites, the international space station or the Russian telecom market.
The cargo ship was expected to automatically park itself at the Pirs docking compartment on the Russian segment of the space station the following day, but the attempt failed and the maneuver was aborted.
MSN: Unmanned Russian cargo ship says goodbye to space station
Earlier Thursday, new Alpha commander Frank Culbertson and Russian flight engineers Vladimir Dezhurov and Mikhail Tyurin beamed down a message marking the one-thousandth day in space for the first component of the space station, the Russian-built Zarya module.
The attacks in New York and Washington have not impacted a scheduled Russian launch to the international space station.
The hookups with U.S. commercial spacecraft would have to be cleared with the Russians and the other partners in the space station effort, and Russian officials have said they need solid safety assurances about the commercial operations before giving the go-ahead.
He'll blast off in a Russian capsule, and after it docks with the space station, he'll be able to shake hands with Sergei Volkov, the first child of a Russian cosmonaut to go up.
Shuttle Endeavour, which had been docked with the Mir space station, unhooked on Thursday, about a half hour after the Russian space agency launched a Soyuz rocket with three new crew members for the space station.
Mirren's nomination for playing the aging wife of Russian writer Leo Tolstoy gave "The Last Station" two chances to win an Oscar.
This is the first spaceflight for the two Russian Cosmonauts, but Ford was at the station in 2009 on a quick jaunt piloting the Space Shuttle Discovery.
Last night, American astronaut Sunita Williams of NASA, Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide and Russian Cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko left the International Space Station which has been their home for the past 4 months.
Over the next six months the crew will perform 137 investigations on the US operating segment of the station, and 44 on the Russian segment, according to a statement from the US space agency, Nasa.
Hadfield, Marshburn and Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko are scheduled to leave the station Monday at 7:08 p.m.
Eight hours and 20 minutes after leaving the Russian capital, train 42 finally eased into Novgorod station.
That company, Space Adventures, eventually made a deal with the Russian space agency to sell trips to the space station.
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