Hadfield will also serve as Romanenko’s flight engineer 1 – or co-pilot – aboard the Soyuz TMA-07M that launches the three fliers and returns them to Earth.

“He’s well organized, a highly disciplined person,” said Romanenko of his Canadian colleague through a translator. “He’s able to make decisions, which are the only correct ones in a given situation.”

If the scheduling holds, Hadfield, Romanenko and Marshburn will join ISS Expedition 34 commander Kevin Ford, of NASA , and cosmonauts Oleg Novitsky and Evgeny Tarelkin, as the 33 Soyuz spacecraft docks with the station two days after lifting off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazkhstan.

Hadfield is scheduled to assume command in mid-March, as Expedition 35 begins with the departure of Ford, Novitsky and Tarelkin.