The Soyuz TMA-22 (ISS-29/30) prime and back-up crew participated in the traditional
pre-flight press conference in Star City.
Anton Shkaplerov admitted to journalists that one of the most interesting activities during the mission will be the Chibis-M micro-satellite, to be launched with the Progress M-13M cargo spacecraft.
He also revealed that his call sign will be "Astra," and that the "weightless indicator" (hung on the ceiling of the Soyuz cabin) will be a little red bird from the mobile game "Angry Birds," which he got from his 5-year old daughter.
Anatoli Ivanishin stated to be most interested in the 'Typology' experiment — the study of typological features of operator activity of ISS at different stages of space flight. Dan Burbank described experiments that will study the effects of weightlessness on humans.
During the event, "rookie" cosmonauts Shkaplerov and Ivanishin also received their flight-cosmonaut certificates, no. 135 for Shkaplerov and no. 136 for Ivanishin.
In addition, the crew and their back-ups went to Moscow for the traditional pre-flight tour of Red Square.