MOSCOW, March 23 The only woman in the Russian cosmonaut corps, Anna Kikina, said she did not regret not having gone into outer space during her first flight to the International Space station, but wants to do so in the future.
«I am not offended that I did not go into outer space. But I want to go into outer space and I hope that someday in my practice this will happen. It happens in different ways. Not all astronauts do not immediately go into outer space,» — said Kikina at a press conference in Moscow.
She clarified that her crewmate Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata first went into outer space only during his fifth flight.
During her first flight, Kikina acted as the operator of the ERA robotic arm, which was used during spacewalks by fellow Russian cosmonauts Sergei Prokopiev and Dmitry Petelin.
At the same time, she said that flying in the American ship Crew Dragon is convenient, because «the position of a person in the chair is more physiological than in our ship», in addition, there is more free space. The landing, which Crew Dragon, unlike the Russian Soyuz ships, makes on the water, she called soft.
Anna Kikina, the only woman in the Russian cosmonaut corps, made her first flight to the International Space Station from October 5, 2022 to March 12, 2023. She was the first of the Russians to stay and return from the station on the American ship Crew Dragon.
March 22, 13:08