By Meghan Bartels
Yevgeny Mikrin, (click here) the head of Russia's human spaceflight program, has died, the country's space agency Roscosmos confirmed Tuesday (May 5). The statement did not specify a cause of death. Mikrin, who was in his mid-60s, tested positive for the new coronavirus last month.
Before his diagnosis, Mikrin had attended the April 9 launch of a Soyuz spacecraft carrying a NASA astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts to the International Space Station. On April 28, Roscosmos Director General Dmitry Rogozin said on Twitter that the incubation period for any crew exposure to the coronavirus had passed and that the astronauts were feeling fine. Earlier in April, NASA expressed complete confidence in the astronauts' health and the integrity of the crew's prelaunch quarantine....
