[ad_1]
Efforts to ‘rescue’ two stranded NASA astronauts ahead of SpaceX’s scheduled launch this week have reached their final stages. NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov will launch aboard the Crew-9 mission to the International Space Station ‘no earlier than September 25’. The spacecraft is expected to return in February with Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams.
“The crew will launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft from Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Hague and Gorbunov will become Expedition 72 crew members on the station,” a recent press note from the space agency stated.
Hague has spent 203 days in space since she was first selected as a NASA astronaut in 2013. This will be her third launch and second mission to the space station.
Hague and Gorbunov will fly to the space station as part of a two-crew flight aboard a SpaceX Dragon as commander and mission specialist, respectively.
The two, along with Wilmore and Williams and three other astronauts, will spend about six months aboard the ISS. During this time, the group will “conduct scientific research in microgravity and complete a variety of operational activities before returning home”.
Hague completed his astronaut training as part of NASA’s 21st astronaut class in July 2015. He launched in 2019, when he joined three of his classmates — NASA astronauts Jessica Meir, Christina Koch and Andrew Morgan — on the International Space Station for Expeditions 59 and 60.
He was born and raised in Kansas before earning degrees from the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. He attended the US Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base in California. Hague’s military career has taken him to New Mexico, Colorado, Virginia and Washington, DC, and included a five-month deployment to Iraq. Hague transferred from the Air Force to the US Space Force in 2020 after serving as the director of test and evaluation for the Space Force at the Pentagon.
[ad_2]
