Congratulations to Samantha Cristoforetti!
She'll be wizzing over us for an extra month ;-)
The current crew on the International Space Station is going to be spending at least another month in space after the Russian space agency Roscosmos decided to keep them up there a while longer, and at least one resident astronaut is over the moon at the prospect. Italy's first woman in space, astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti …
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They have no problem with coming back, but there is no point bringing them back now, and having the station only half-staffed. Also the Dragon may survive re-entry, but since it has no life support (or seats) it wouldn't make for a good experience!
I read that they wanted to swap the next crew launch with the next progress supply mission to have more confidence before putting astronauts on the rocket. When the next crew launch is set up, the retiring crew can come back.
For more details see http://www.russianspaceweb.com/mexsat1.html
Also a comment to the editor: cosmonauts have never, ever travelled aboard Progress re-supply capsules. They travel aboard Soyuz capsules which are an ancestor of modern Progress capsules. The issue relates to the common(ish) third stage of the confusingly-named (for-the-Western-media-name) Soyuz launcher (the Russian name is a part number, a derivative of the old 8K85 IIRC). Therefore the comments regarding the Progress capsule are incorrect. A correction to the article would be appreciated.
I could be wrong here but isn't "captain" in terms of a ships captain a title and the rank is commander?
So not actually the same "rank", especially as an airforce captain is quite different in terms of rank and authority to a ships captain.
But it's still a nice on play words :-)
Depends on what Navy you talk about. For example in the Italian Navy you have three 'captain' ranks (corvette, frigate, vessel captain, above there are admirals), you can address as 'commander' when in charge of a ship. If I'm not wrong US and Royal Navy use lieutenant commander, commander, captain for the same ranks. Royal Navy IIRC has the commodore rank above captain as well.
Anyway all those ranks are more or less equivalent to a colonel in other services, where a captain is usually the rank above a lieutenant.