On the 31 of January, 2010 astronauts from Great Britain, Germany, Denmark, Italy and France came from European Center for Astronauts at Cologne to Saint Petersburg to pass an intensive programme of Russian language. During one month they will study conversational Russian and specific space engineering vocabulary in Russian Language and Culture Institute of Saint Petersburg State University.
Interest of European Space Agency towards Russian language is motivated by the changes of the modern space infrastructure: in the forthcoming years American shuttles will not be used at flights to the International Space Station. Thus, Russian spacecraft "Soyuz" will be the only transport to deliver crews to the International Space Station. Thus, knowledge of Russian will be essential both for prelaunch learning of "Soyuz" spacecraft and the Russian segment of the International Space Station and for successful cooperation with the space crew on orbit.
This unique project proceeded successfully due to collaborative work between Russian Language and Culture Institute of SPbSU and Institute of Foreign Languages of Ruhr University at Bochum (Germany), where astronauts started their training. The training stage in Saint Petersburg is introduced to improve language competence of the astronauts through communication in Russian verbal environment - at the lessons, at their Russian host families, during workouts at the sport club and at sightseeing in Saint Petersburg.
"All teachers of Russian Language and Culture Institute will attentively observe the probable flights of the astronauts because from now on they are our students", said Evgeny Yurkov, Director of Russian language and Culture Institute of SPbSU.
Astronauts will study Russian language till the 27th of February. In autumn 2010 they plan to come back in Russia and proceed to their prelaunch studies at Zvezdny Gorodok in Moscow region.
