NASA astronaut Nick Hague will be the first Space Force Guardian to launch to the International Space Station.
Hague, who flew twice to space with the U.S. Air Force and NASA before being transferred to Space Force, was named to the SpaceX Crew-9 mission Wednesday (Jan. 31) for an expected International Space Station (ISS) launch in August.
NASA and the Department of Defense have been collaborating since the dawn of the space program. The first U.S. astronauts in 1959 were recruited from the military for the Mercury program, for example. Even today, about two-thirds of NASA astronauts have served in the U.S. Armed Forces, according to Space Force numbers.
Space Force, however, was only established in 2019 as the sixth U.S. military branch. Following his last ISS journey, Hague did a leadership rotation at the Pentagon with Space Force in 2019 as its director of test and evaluation. While still in that role, he transferred in 2021 from Air Force to Space Force.
Related: NASA names astronauts for SpaceX’s Crew-9 mission to the ISS
Hague has been to space twice, although the first time was only for a few minutes. His initial ISS launch attempt on Oct. 11, 2018 aborted mid-flight due to a deformed sensor aboard his Russian Soyuz rocket, also carrying Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin.
“This is not the first in-flight emergency that I’ve been a part of,” Hague, who was unharmed from the emergency landing, told reporters a few days after the abort. As evidence, he pointed to his time with the U.S. Air Force as a test pilot and in combat.
Russian engineers addressed the root cause of the rocket failure. Following a new Soyuz launch five months later with NASA astronaut Christina Koch, the trio reached the orbiting lab on March 15, 2019. Hague has accrued 203 days in space already.
Hague’s Crew-9 crewmates include cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov of the Roscosmos and two other NASA astronauts: Zena Cardman and Stephanie Wilson. Cardman and Gorbunov will be on their first spaceflight. Wilson spent 42 days in space across three orbital missions, most recently aboard space shuttle Discovery mission STS-131 in April 2010.
Crew-9 will be the ninth operational mission for SpaceX under NASA’s commercial crew program and will spend about six months in space. The next ISS flight with SpaceX, Crew-8, is expected to launch to the ISS no earlier than Feb. 22, NASA also announced Wednesday.
Dr. Thomas Hughes is a UK-based scientist and science communicator who makes complex topics accessible to readers. His articles explore breakthroughs in various scientific disciplines, from space exploration to cutting-edge research.
