Russia cosmonaut team replenished

The Russian cosmonaut team has increased to 43 people: the interdepartmental commission has approved another eight candidatures on Thursday, the RIA Novosti correspondent quotes the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in the Star City as saying.

The new entrants are Air Force pilots Anatoly Ivanishin, Alexander Samokutyaev, Yevgeni Tarelkin, Anton Shkaplerov; biochemist Sergei Ryazanski (he participated in testing medical space equipment) of the Institute of Medico-Biological Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences; engineers Oleg Artemyev and Mark Serov of the Energia Space Rocketry Corporation; Andrei Borisenko, shift officer at the Mission Control.

They are all between 27 and 39 years of age.