by NASA dropped two female astronauts, including the commander, from SpaceX’s next crewed rotation flight to the International Space Station, freeing up two seats for the agency’s Starliner astronauts to ride home next February.
Rookie Crew 9 commander Zena Cardman and veteran Stephanie Wilson will stay behind when the shuttle Crew Dragon lifts off from pad 40 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on September 24 carrying crewmate Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov.
Also on board: clothing, supplies and SpaceX pressure suits for Starliner commander Barry “Butch” Wilmore and co-pilot Sunita Williams, whose originally planned eight-day test flight reached its 86th day on Friday. By the time they land aboard the Crew capsule next February 9, they will have logged more than 262 days in space.
Hague, a Space Force colonel, former F-16 test pilot and combat veteran who logged 203 days in space on an earlier mission, was initially assigned as Cardman’s co-pilot. He will now take on the role of mission commander, assisted by Gorbunov.
Gorbunov kept his seat aboard the Crew 9 Dragon as part of an ongoing program in which Russian Soyuz spacecraft carry one NASA astronaut on each flight to the ISS and each Crew Dragon sends a cosmonaut.
This ensures that each country has at least one crew member aboard the lab even if an emergency forces one ferry and its crew to return unplanned to Earth. But Gorbunov is not trained to serve as a Crew Dragon pilot and will retain his original designation of “mission specialist”.
NASA chief astronaut Joe Acaba made the decision as to who would fly aboard the Crew 9 mission and who would stay behind. Although he did not explain his reasoning in NASA’s statement announcing the decision, Hague’s spaceflight experience made the difference clear.
“While we have changed the crew in the past for various reasons, reducing the crew size for this flight was another tough decision since the crew is trained as a crew of four,” he said in a statement. “I have a lot of confidence in all of our crew. … Zena and Stephanie will continue to help their colleagues before the launch.”
In the same statement, Cardman said: “I am confident that Nick and Alex will step into their roles superbly. All four of us remain committed to the success of this mission, and Stephanie and I look forward to flying when the time is right.” right.”
NASA had originally planned to send Cardman, Hague, Wilson and Gorbunov earlier this month on a routine six-month tour of duty, replacing three other astronauts and a cosmonaut – Crew 8 – completing their own half-year stay on board the station.
But the Crew 9 flight was set up and NASA managers debated whether the Boeing Starliner capsule, launched June 5 on its first pilot test flight, could bring its two crew members home safely after multiple helium leaks and thrust problems shortly after launched in June. 5.
Playing it safe, agency managers decided on August 24 Keeping Wilmore and Williams aboard the station for an extended period of time and returning the Boeing spacecraft to Earth by remote control. This left Crew Dragon as the only ship available to return Wilmore and Williams to Earth.
The Starliner is now expected to lift off from the space station on September 6, setting up an unmanned landing at White Sands, NM, late that night.
The launch of Crew 9 is the first step in a complex sequence of flights to replace the station’s seven long-time crew members with a new set of astronauts and cosmetics.
The Russians plan to send two cosmonauts, Aleksey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner, along with NASA astronaut Donald Pettit to the laboratory complex on September 11. Cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub and NASA’s Tracy Dyson will return to Earth on September 23, the day before the two men of Crew 9 depart.
Kononenko and Chub are approaching a full year in orbit and will have logged a total of 374 days at touchdown. Kononenko will also set a new record for the most space over multiple flights: 1,111 days.
The four Crew 8 flyers – Matthew Dominick, Mike Barratt, Jeanette Epps and cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin – are expected to return home on October 1 to complete the crew’s rotation sequence.
What to watch as the college football season begins
A behind-the-scenes look at America’s boba boom
How to ace your next job interview
