NASA has revealed the team of four astronauts set to journey to the International Space Station on SpaceX’s Crew-9 mission this summer. The quartet includes cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov from the Russian space agency Roscosmos, as well as three NASA astronauts: Zena Cardman, Nick Hague, and Stephanie Wilson. Cardman will serve as mission commander, Hague as the pilot, and Wilson and Gorbunov as mission specialists. The launch of Crew-9 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Florida’s Space Coast is scheduled for no earlier than August. A specific target date has not been announced yet.
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Crew-9 marks the first spaceflight for both Cardman and Gorbunov, who were selected by their respective national space agencies in 2017 and 2018. Hague, on the other hand, has participated in two space missions, including a lengthy trip to the International Space Station in 2019. This mission occurred approximately five months after an aborted ISS launch, during which a rocket issue necessitated an emergency landing for the Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying Hague and cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin. Wilson has accumulated a total of 42 days in space across three orbital missions, all of which were aboard the space shuttle Discovery.
As the name suggests, Crew-9 will be the ninth operational astronaut mission that SpaceX conducts to the ISS for NASA utilizing the company’s Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule. It will have a brief overlap with Crew-8, whose four astronauts are scheduled to launch towards the orbiting lab no earlier than February 22.
