NASA has announced its eighth astronaut crew with SpaceX.
The Crew-8 astronauts who will launch on a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft will include NASA astronauts Matthew Dominick (commander), Michael Barratt (pilot), and Jeanette Epps (mission specialist), together with Roscosmos cosmonaut and mission specialist Alexander Grebenkin.
The quartet will fly to the International Space Station (ISS) in early 2024, NASA officials stated on Aug. 4. A previous NASA statement put the launch date no earlier than Feb. 2024. They might be the relief crew for Crew-7, which can send one other foursome to space no sooner than Aug. 25.
Three of the Crew-8 astronauts are on their first mission, while this might be Barratt’s third trip following flights in 2009 (ISS Expeditions 19-20) and 2011 (the space shuttle’s STS-133).
Crew-8 might be the eighth crewed operational mission by SpaceX, which is a business crew vendor that sends astronauts to the ISS on NASA’s behalf.
Epps might be the second Black woman to have a long-duration mission on the ISS, following the mission of Jessica Watkins in 2022. Epps was pulled late within the training from one other ISS crew that flew in 2018, but was immediately made eligible for other assignments.
She next worked on development of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, and was reassigned from the debut Starliner-1 crewed launch after tech delays arose.
Starliner might be the second business crew vehicle for NASA and is likely to be able to fly astronauts in 2023, but a significant update on the spacecraft is anticipated Monday (Aug. 7) and a brand new flight date could also be announced at the moment.