The chief of Russia's Federal Space Agency Roscosmos, Anatoly Perminov, approved on Friday (March 11) the mission emblem for the next crew of the Russian manned spacecraft Soyuz, TMA-02M, which is scheduled to launch in May 2011.
The Soyuz TMA-02M crew (Sergey Volkov, Michael Fossum, Satoshi Furukawa) chose as the inspiration for its mission patch the drawing of 8-year-old artist Kati Ikramov from Krasnoyarsk, Russia.
Ikramov has been invited to the Baikonur Cosmodrome in May, and Roscosmos hopes that the journey will be a wonderful gift for her in Russia's "Year of Space Exploration."