Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield and his two future crewmates passed their final exam in flying the Soyuz this week in Star City outside Moscow.

Preparing for a December launch, Hadfield, American Tom Marshburn and Russian commander Roman Romanenko drew envelopes with simulated malfunctions, and had to work through them.

Hadfield has been tweeting up a storm during the extensive training. He posted this photo after the exam, with the caption: “Final Soyuz exam — facing the commission. On the table are envelopes to choose our malfunctions.”

Hadfield, a former CF-18 pilot, could never pilot a NASA shuttle. That job was for Americans only. But on the Soyuz he will be the flight engineer and co-pilot.

This week’s test was in preparation for another crew’s launch on July 15. Hadfield, Marshburn and Romanenko are backups in case a “prime” crew member is too sick to fly. There will be more testing before the December launch, then six months on the International Space Station. He will be the station commander for the final three months, the first non-Russian and non-American to do so.

Hadfield continues to give the public an unprecedented window into astronaut training. Some recent tweets:

• On good and bad space food: “best: Russian soup, Hawaiian chicken, shrimp cocktail, Cdn maple syrup. Worst: turkey tetrazzini, too dry and lumpy.”

(Historically, shrimp cocktail is the favourite astronaut food. Zero-gravity drives fluid up to the head, giving a clogged-sinus feeling and deadening the sense of taste. Shrimp with horseradish sauce clears this up.)

• To someone who asked whether he trusts Russian space technology: “I’ve been studying it and training on it for 18 years. I helped build Mir. I trust it with my life.”

• To a woman who asked, “Have you ever ‘lost your cookies’?” His answer: “yes, of course. No big deal, just don’t miss the bag. You can get more cookies later.”

• On sleeping in space. A woman asked, “what do you prefer when your sleeping in space, free-floating or tethering yourself to the wall?” He replied: “tethered; you don’t drift into things and wake up.”

• He tweeted that he has been training to use the Canadarm2, the big arm on the space station, “for grabbing and berthing cargo ships like Dragon and Cygnus, plus potentially for moving spacewalkers around if needed.”

• And on May 13, as another crew prepared to fly: “Soyuz rocketship rolled out to launch this morning. Just over 6 months until ours. Incredible.”

Beginning after his 2001 space flight, Hadfield served as NASA’s director of operations in Russia. He co-ordinated and directed astronaut training, oversaw support staffing and negotiated policy changes among the station’s global partners, all while honing his Russian language skills.