Five NASA astronauts have been assigned to
upcoming spaceflights. Joe Acaba,
Ricky
Arnold, Nick
Hague, Serena
Auñón-Chancellor and Shannon
Walker all have begun training for missions launching later this year and
throughout 2018.
Acaba will be the first to launch, assigned
to the Expedition 53 and 54 crews that already include Mark Vande Hei of
NASA, and Alexander Misurkin of the Russian space agency Roscosmos. They will
launch aboard a Soyuz spacecraft in September. Walker will train as a
dedicated backup for Acaba.
Arnold will join NASA’s Drew Feustel and a
Russian cosmonaut for Expeditions 55 and 56 to launch in March 2018. Arnold
and Acaba’s assignments were enabled by the recent agreement
to add additional crew members in 2017 and 2018 to boost space station
science and research.
First-time fliers Hague and
Auñón-Chancellor will fall into the standard rotation for NASA astronauts.
Hague will launch in September 2018 on Expeditions 57 and 58 with two Russian
cosmonauts. Auñón-Chancellor will join the Expedition 58 and 59 crews in
November 2018, along with Canadian Space Agency astronaut David Saint-Jacques
and a Russian cosmonaut.
“It’s great to get to announce so many
assignments at once,” said Chris Cassidy, chief of the Astronaut Office at
NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. “There’s plenty of work to be done at
the space station, and the research opportunities are almost limitless. These
folks are all going to do great work and bring a lot of value to their
crewmates.”
Between now and their launches, each of the
astronauts will undergo a busy regimen of training on space station systems
and the experiments they’ll work with while in space.
“The addition of these extra crew members
will be a boon to the entire scientific community doing research on station,
and especially those who have been waiting for access to the platform” said
Julie Robinson, NASA’s chief scientist for the International Space Station.
“We’ll be capable of undertaking more complex research activities, which will
in turn prepare NASA for the journey to Mars, unearth new markets for
research in microgravity and deliver benefits back to Earth.”
This will be Acaba’s third trip to the
space station and his second long-duration mission. He was selected as an
astronaut in 2004, and flew on space shuttle Discovery’s STS-119 station
assembly mission in 2009, before returning for a longer stay in 2012, as part
of the Expedition 31 and 32 crews.
Born in Inglewood, California, and raised
in Anaheim, California, Acaba earned a bachelors’ degree in geology at
University of California in Santa Barbara, one master’s in geology from the
University of Arizona, and one in education, curriculum and instruction from
Texas Tech University. Before coming to NASA, he spent time in the U.S.
Marine Corps Reserves and the Peace Corps, worked as a hydro-geologist and
taught high school and middle school.
Arnold will be visiting the space station
for the second time, but this trip will be much longer than his last. He also
was selected in the 2004 class and flew with Acaba on STS-119. On that mission,
he conducted two spacewalks, spending 12 hours and 34 minutes outside the
space station.
Arnold was raised in Bowie, Maryland. He
earned a bachelo’s in science from Frostburg State University, and a master’s
in marine, estuarine and environmental science from the University of
Maryland. He has taught school in Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and
Romania. He also served as an oceanographic technician for the U.S. Naval
Academy and a marine scientist at the Cape Cod National Seashore.
Selected as a member of the 2013 astronaut
class, Hague is a native of Hoxie, Kansas, and a colonel in the U.S. Air
Force. Prior to his selection, he was part of the Air Force Fellows program
in Washington, where he worked as an adviser to the U.S. Senate on matters of
national defense and foreign policy.
Hague earned a bachelor’s degree in
astronautical engineering from the U.S. Air Force Academy and a master’s in
aeronautical and astronautical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology.
Auñón-Chancellor, from Fort Collins,
Colorado, joined the astronaut corps in 2009, and has been at NASA since
2006, when she became a flight surgeon. She also served as the deputy lead
for medical operations for NASA’s Orion spacecraft before being selected as
an astronaut.
In addition to a bachelor’s in electrical
engineering from George Washington University, Auñón-Chancellor holds a
doctorate in medicine from the University of Texas Health Science Center at
Houston, and is board certified in internal and aerospace medicine.
She also earned a master’s in public health
from the University of Texas Medical Branch.
Walker spent 163 days as a flight engineer
for Expedition 24 and 25 in 2010. She was born in Houston and began her
career at NASA’s Johnson Space Center as a robotics flight controller for the
space station with Rockwell Space Operations Co. in 1987. In 1995, she became
a NASA employee, working on robotics and hardware for the station with the
program’s international partners. She also coordinated on-orbit problem
resolution in the Mission Evaluation Room at Johnson and in Moscow, and
served as deputy manager of the On-Orbit Engineering Office before being
selected for the 2004 astronaut class.
Walker earned a bachelor’s in physics, a
master’s in science and a doctorate in space physics, all from Rice
University.
Follow Serena Auñón-Chancellor on Twitter
at:
Follow Joe Acaba on Twitter at:
Nick Hague and Shannon Walker will post
social media updates on Twitter at:
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