ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet (FR) is assigned to fly on the Soyuz MS-03 spacecraft to the International Space Station, scheduled for November 2016 and as part of Expedition 50/51, with cosmonaut Oleg Novitski and NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson. Expedition 50 begins with the scheduled undocking of Soyuz MS-01 in October 2016 and Thomas's crew join Commander Shane Kimbrough of NASA and cosmonauts Andrei Borisenko and Sergei Ryzhikov who transfer from Expedition 49.