Aleksandr Samokutyayev

• Soyuz TMA -21 ( 2011)   ISS Expedition 27
• ISS Expedition 28

Alexander Mikhailovich Samokutjajew (Russian Александр Михайлович Самокутяев; born March 13, 1970 in Penza, Penza Oblast, Russian SFSR ) is a Russian cosmonaut.

Military training

Samokutjajew closed in 1992, the pilot school Chernihiv as a pilot - engineer and flew Wilga 35A, L-13 Blanik, Aero L -39 and Sukhoi Su -24. He served the Russian Air Force in the Far East Military District and can prove 680 flight hours and 250 parachute jumps. His other skills consist of Qualified diving. He was also deputy squadron commander and has held the rank of lieutenant colonel of the Russian Air Force. From 1998 to 2000 he studied at the Gagarin Military Academy of the Air Force in Monino, after which he was appointed group leader at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center.

Spaceman activity

On 29 May 2003 Samokutjajew was selected as the candidate of the cosmonaut training center, he closed his Cosmonaut basic training in June 2005 with honors. By November 2008, an extended ISS training. Since then, he was in training for a long stay on the International Space Station, and he was a replacement for Alexander Skvortsov as commander of the spaceship Soyuz TMA -18 to the ISS.

Samokutjajew was a flight engineer of Expeditions 27 and 28, he started on 4 April 2011 (local time in Baikonur: April 5 ), together with Andrei Borisenko and Ronald Garan as commander of the spaceship Soyuz TMA -21 and landed again on 16 September 2011.

Private

Alexander Samokutjajew is married and has one daughter. His hobbies include ice hockey and traveling.