NASA
NASA on Friday publicly announced a decision that has been roiling the agency’s space program leadership for weeks. The space agency has named the two crew members who will be on a Crew Dragon mission that will launch to the International Space Station no earlier than Sept. 24.
NASA astronaut Nick Hague will serve as mission commander and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov will serve as mission specialist. Instead of a usual complement of four astronauts, a two-person crew was necessary due to the need to use the Crew 9 spacecraft, Freedomas a rescue vehicle for astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams. They flew to the space station in June aboard Boeing's Starliner vehicle, which has been determined to be unsafe for reentry.
Wilmore and Williams will join Crew 9 aboard the space station and fly back to Earth with Hague and Gorbunov in February.
The story behind the story
This is a significant change from the original composition of the Crew 9 manifest. NASA publicly announced the original members of Crew 9 in January of last year, including three NASA astronauts and Gorbunov. It would be led by Zena Cardman, piloted by Hague, with Stephanie Wilson and Gorbunov as mission specialists.
Cardman’s appointment was significant at the time: She would have been the first rookie astronaut without test pilot experience to lead a NASA spaceflight. Cardman, a 36-year-old geobiologist, joined NASA in 2017 and is highly regarded by her colleagues. Assigning a rookie, non-test pilot to lead the Crew 9 mission reflected NASA’s confidence in the self-flying capabilities of Dragon, which must reach the station autonomously. The assignment was made in 2022 by then-chief astronaut Reid Wiseman, and the Astronaut Office was confident that Cardman, with an experienced hand in Hague at her side, could lead the mission.
The need to rescue Wilmore and Williams changed the equation. It was up to Joe Acaba, a veteran astronaut who became chief of the Astronaut Office in February 2023, to select a new crew manifest. To maintain the ongoing rotation with the Russian space program, one of the crew members had to be Gorbunov. So Acaba had to choose between Cardman, Hague and Wilson.
Initially, Acaba stayed with Cardman. After all, she was the original mission commander. But that led to significant dissension within the Astronaut Office, sources said. While Cardman is respected and Dragon is designed to be fully autonomous, it was taxing for her to be the only NASA representative aboard the vehicle. (Russian astronauts generally do not have extensive training in operating American vehicles.) A nontrivial percentage of professional astronauts succumb to space sickness during the first few hours of their space flights.
Some in the astronaut office argued that Hague was the safer choice. Hague, an Air Force test pilot, survived a terrifying Soyuz abortion in 2018 and then flew in space for more than six months in 2019. Hague, these astronauts said, was the safer choice for NASA if the agency really wanted to maximize the chances of a successful mission.
Ultimately, these dissidents, with some support from the upper echelons of NASA management, won out, and Acaba replaced Hague with Cardman. A decision was made before a Flight Readiness Review meeting on August 24, but it was not made public until Friday.
Official NASA Comment
“While we have changed crews before for various reasons, reducing the crew size for this flight was another difficult decision to get used to, as the crew is trained as a crew of four,” Acaba said in a press release issued Friday. “I have complete confidence in all of our crew members, who have been outstanding during training for the mission. Zena and Stephanie will continue to help their crewmates in the run-up to launch, and they are an example of what it means to be a professional astronaut.”
There was also a stylish quote in the press release from Cardman, who revealed Friday that her father, Larry Cardman, had died three weeks ago. “I am extremely proud of our entire crew,” she said. “And I have confidence that Nick and Alex will perform their roles with excellence. 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.”
Let's hope her time comes very, very soon.
