by NASA astronaut Jeanette Epps had an unusual path to space: She waited an extra six years to fly.
Epps will finally fly to the International Space Station (ISS) no sooner than Saturday night (March 2) on a SpaceX Crew-8 mission for NASA, completing the second long-duration mission by a Black woman on the orbiting complex. But Epps was supposed to get there as early as June 2018; that timeline was delayed twice, after reassignment from Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft and Boeing’s Starliner.
“It’s been a few years, but I had confidence that I would fly,” said Epps, 53, during a Crew-8 press conference held on January 25 by NASA at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Epps noted that she kept her spirits up by focusing on training, which has kept her “pretty busy the last few years.” NASA, she said, eventually transferred her to the SpaceX spacecraft to gain earlier flight experience and prepare for future missions.
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Epps, an engineer-in-training and former technical intelligence officer for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), was selected by NASA in July 2009 as an astronaut candidate. Including international astronauts, only Epps and Canadian Space Agency (CSA) Jeremy Hansen remain unflyable from that selection group, although Hansen is assigned to fly on NASA’s Artemis 2 moon mission in 2025.
However, the CSA only flies astronauts to the ISS about every six years because of its 2.3% contribution to the station. As the majority partner in the space station, NASA gets seats and frequent flight opportunities for the ISS along with the other major participant, Russia. Thus, in 2017, Epps received a flight assignment for Expeditions 56 and 57, with a scheduled liftoff aboard Soyuz MS-09 in June 2018. This was a typical stay for a NASA astronaut, given the spacecraft seats on available at the time.
But in January 2018, NASA announced that Epps would be removed from Soyuz MS-09. Her NASA backup, Serena Auñón-Chancellor, would serve in Epps’ place. When asked at the time why the agency made the late hour change, NASA spokeswoman Brandi Dean told Space.com partner collectSPACE that several factors were considered. “These decisions are personnel matters that NASA does not provide information about,” Dean said.
Related: NASA astronaut Jeanette Epps talks about her harrowing transition from the space mission
Epps first addressed the issue in an interview on stage at the Tech Open Air festival in Berlin in June 2018. “There’s no time to worry about sexism and racism and things like that, because we have to perform, “Epps. told about some of the rumors behind the decision. “And if it comes into play, then you’re hindering the mission, and you’re hindering the performance. And so whether or not it’s a factor, I can’t speculate on what people thinking and doing if I’m not a little. a little more information.”
Epps added that many of her Russian colleagues expressed safety concerns when she was removed from the Soyuz crew just months before launch, as they had been training for about two years before the reassignment. “I don’t know where the decision came from and how it was made, in detail or to what level,” Epps noted.
NASA will assign Epps to Starliner in August 2020 for the spacecraft’s first operational mission to the ISS. However, Starliner has been delayed by numerous technical issues, and its first crewed, test mission to the ISS is not expected to fly until April this year. NASA then reassigned Epps to SpaceX Crew-8, SpaceX’s eighth operational astronaut mission to the ISS, in August 2023.
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When Epps reaches space, she will be at least the 19th Black astronaut to go there, according to NASA statistics as of February 2023. That’s out of more than 600 individuals who have flown into space worldwide. (However, the number of people in space may vary according to the criteria used; in August 2023, for example, the Virgo Galactic sent two Black people to sub-real space, just below the Kármán line defined by international authorities as the limit of space. )
Black NASA astronauts such as Charlie Bolden, who is also a former NASA administrator, have spoken out about the institutional racism in the US that did not allow Black astronauts to reach orbit until decades later than their white peers. Black NASA technicians on the ground who played key roles in early human spaceflight, like the “Hidden Figures,” also received little attention.
Robert H. Lawrence was the first Black astronaut assigned to a space flight, according to NASA; Lawrence died in a plane crash in 1967 before the US military’s proposed Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) space station could take off. Ultimately MOL did not fly. US test pilot Black Ed Dwight participated in space-related military activities in the 1960s but for complex reasons (outlined in a 2020 Smithsonian Magazine article) never made it to space.
The first Black astronaut in orbit was Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez, who visited the Soviet space station Salyut-6 in 1980, NASA said.
NASA recruited its first Black and female astronauts in 1978. Guion S. Bluford was the first Black astronaut to fly at NASA in 1983 aboard the space shuttle mission STS-8, and Mae Jemison was the first Black female to fly at NASA in 1992 on STS-47. Other milestones include: Bernard Harris became the first person to spacewalk in 1995 on STS-55, Victor Glover became the first Black long-term astronaut in 2020-21 during ISS Expeditions 64 and 65, and Jessica Watkins was the first long-running Black female. flyer in 2022 for Tours 67 and 68.
