Preparations are underway at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Star City, and at NASA’s Johnson Space Center for the Soyuz MS-16 mission to the International Space Station (ISS). This comes after the recent announcement that the Prime Crew of Soyuz MS-16 which included Russian Cosmonauts Nikolai Tikhonov (Commander), Andrei Babkin (Flight Engineer 1), and NASA Astronaut Christopher Cassidy (Flight Engineer 2) would have to be broken up. This was due to an eye injury suffered by Nikolai Tikhonov.
Roscosmos said that they would instead replace Tikhonov and Babkin with Anatoli Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner in the Commander and Flight Engineer 1 roles respectively. Cassidy will remain in the Flight Engineer 2 position for MS-16.