WASHINGTON, March 28, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- 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 bachelor's 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 bachelor'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.
These astronauts will join a long and distinguished line of
astronauts who have crewed the International Space Station since
November 2000. With the help of the
more than 200 astronauts who have visited, the space station
enables us to demonstrate new technologies and make research
breakthroughs not possible on Earth. Its convergence of science,
technology and human innovation provide a springboard to NASA's
next giant leap in exploration.
Follow Ricky Arnold on Twitter
at:
https://twitter.com/astro_ricky
Follow Serena Auñón-Chancellor on Twitter at:
http://www.twitter.com/AstroSerena
Follow Joe Acaba on Twitter
at:
https://twitter.com/astroacaba
Nick Hague and Shannon Walker will post social media updates on
Twitter at:
http://www.twitter.com/NASA_Astronauts
To view the original version on PR Newswire,
visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/nasa-announces-upcoming-international-space-station-crew-assignments-300430754.html
SOURCE NASA