The first Space Force Guardian slated to travel to the International Space Station is NASA astronaut Nick Hague. Hague, who has previous spaceflight experience with the U.S. Air Force and NASA, was selected for the SpaceX Crew-9 mission scheduled for an upcoming launch to the ISS in August.
NASA and the Department of Defense have a long history of collaboration in the space program. The initial U.S. astronauts in 1959 were drawn from the military for the Mercury program. Presently, around two-thirds of NASA astronauts have military backgrounds, according to Space Force data.
Space Force, established in 2019 as the sixth U.S. military branch, had Hague transition from the Air Force to Space Force following his last ISS mission. After serving as the director of test and evaluation for Space Force at the Pentagon, he officially transferred to Space Force in 2021.
Following his transfer, Hague will be embarking on his third space journey. His first attempt to reach the ISS on October 11, 2018 was unsuccessful due to a malfunctioning sensor on his Russian Soyuz rocket, which led to an emergency landing. Despite the incident, Hague, drawing from his experience as a test pilot and combatant in the U.S. Air Force, remained unharmed.
Russian engineers addressed the cause of the rocket failure, and Hague successfully entered space on his next launch on March 15, 2019, accumulating 203 days in space overall.
Hague’s Crew-9 crew will include cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov of the Roscosmos, along with two other NASA astronauts: Zena Cardman and Stephanie Wilson. Cardman and Gorbunov will experience their inaugural spaceflight, while Wilson brings her previous spaceflight experience from three orbital missions, including her last one aboard space shuttle Discovery mission STS-131 in April 2010.
Crew-9 is the ninth operational mission for SpaceX under NASA’s commercial crew program and is anticipated to last around six months in space. The following ISS flight with SpaceX, Crew-8, is set to launch no earlier than February 22, as announced by NASA.
