NASA has named the four astronauts who will fly to the International Space Station on SpaceX's Crew-9 mission this summer. <\/p>\n
The Crew-9 quartet consists of cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov of the Russian space agency Roscosmos and three NASA astronauts: Zena Cardman, Nick Hague andStephanie Wilson, NASA revealed in an announcement on Wednesday afternoon (Jan. 31). <\/p>\n
Cardman will command the mission, Hague will be its pilot and Wilson and Gorbunov will serve as mission specialists. <\/p>\n
Crew-9 will launch atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Florida's Space Coast no earlier than this August. A final target date has not yet been announced. <\/p>\n
Related: International Space Station Everything you need to know <\/p>\n
Crew-9 will be the first spaceflight for both Cardman and Gorbunov, who were selected by their nations' space agencies in 2017 and 2018, respectively. <\/p>\n
Hague has two space missions under his belt, including a long-term trip to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2019. That flight lifted off about five months after an aborted ISS launch, during which a rocket problem forced the Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying Hague and cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin to make an emergency landing. (Both were unhurt.) Hague has spent a total of 203 days in space. <\/p>\n
Wilson has racked up a total of 42 days off Earth across three orbital missions, all of which flew aboard the space shuttle Discovery. The most recent of those three flights, STS-131, launched in April 2010. <\/p>\n
As its name suggests, Crew-9 will be the ninth operational astronaut mission that SpaceX flies to the ISS for NASA using the company's Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule. <\/p>\n
It will overlap briefly with Crew-8, whose four astronauts are scheduled to launch toward the orbiting lab no earlier than Feb. 22. <\/p>\n
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NASA names astronauts for SpaceX's Crew-9 mission to the ISS - Space.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" NASA has named the four astronauts who will fly to the International Space Station on SpaceX's Crew-9 mission this summer. The Crew-9 quartet consists of cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov of the Russian space agency Roscosmos and three NASA astronauts: Zena Cardman, Nick Hague andStephanie Wilson, NASA revealed in an announcement on Wednesday afternoon (Jan. 31) Continue reading