Russia's Only Female Cosmonaut Will Fly to ISS as Part of SpaceX's Crew-5 Mission

Earlier this month, Russian space agency Roscosomos announced that they had already selected the first cosmonaut to embark on a journey to the International Space Station (ISS) via a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft. Roscosmos and NASA are now finalizing the details of the mission.

Cosmonaut Anna Kikina was selected to fly to SpaceX's Crew-5 mission to the space station. NASA ISS space manager Joel Montalbano said in a press briefing for the upcoming Dragon cargo resupply that the commercial crew mission will launch in the fall of 2022, and then a NASA astronaut will also fly aboard the forthcoming Soyuz mission.

(Photo: Pixabay/harald_woblick)
Russia's Only Female Cosmonaut Will Fly to ISS as part of SpaceX's Crew-5 Mission.

NASA and Roscosmos Exchange Seats for Future Space Missions

Roscosmos head Dmitry Rogozin has made the announcement on December 8 that Kikina will go to the ISS next year "as part of the crew of an American commercial spacecraft." Kikina was selected because she is the only active female astronaut among Russia's cosmonaut corps.

Space.com reported that the two space agencies have been working to agree on the start of the Commercial Crew Program. Kikina is already training at the SpaceX facilities for her first spaceflight in the fall.

She will be joining other Crew-5 mission members, NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada, who were both transferred from Boeing's supposedly first crewed mission, and JAXA astronaut Koichi Wakata. Rogozin said that the Russian space agency had pledged a seat of a Russian Soyuz capsule to an American astronaut in exchange for Kikina's seat on SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft.

NASA hopes the exchange of seats would boost the relationship between the two space agencies as their commercial crew program ramps up. SpaceX has launched four crewed missions to the space station in low Earth orbit in which three of which were long-duration missions, while the other one was a crewed test flight to prove that the Dragon capsule is capable of sending astronauts to and from the space station.

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Who is Anna Kikina?

Anna Kikina is Russia's only active female cosmonaut scheduled to become the fourth woman to travel to space since cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova first went to space 58 years ago, News18 reported.

She is a Russian engineer and was selected to be a test cosmonaut in 2012. In 2020, she was chosen to take part in the fall 2022 mission for the Soyuz MS-22 and will perform a spacewalk during her 188-day mission in the space station. But it was only recently that Roscosmos head Rogozin announced that she would be flying on SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft for the Crew-5 mission.

Earlier this year, she was chosen as inspiration for a new Barbie doll as a symbol to show that anything is possible when one believes in themself. It was part of Mattel, Inc.'s campaign to inspire women, and what better way to illustrate it by using the 36-year-old cosmonaut as a model.

Roscosmos said that the Barbie doll wearing a blue outfit of a cosmonaut embodies the story of Kikina, a female engineer who once dared to try her hand at becoming an astronaut.