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In the town of Baikonur, Kazakhstan, Expedition 54-55 backup crewmembers Jeanette Epps of NASA, Sergey Prokopyev of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) and Alexander Gerst of the European Space Agency lay flowers Dec. 6 at the statue of Yuri Gagarin, the first human to fly in space, during traditional pre-launch ceremonies. They are serving as backups to Anton Shkaplerov of Roscosmos, Scott Tingle of NASA and Norishige Kanai of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), who will launch Dec. 17 on the Soyuz MS-07 spacecraft for a five-month mission on the International Space Station