Mission 10th Crew Rotation Set For Commercial Launch Provider

NASA has named the four crew members for the 10th launch provided by commercial space company SpaceX. The mission to the International Space Station (ISS) is not currently scheduled but the agency says it will take place no earlier than February 2025.

The team consists of two NASA astronauts, Commander Anne McClain and Pilot Nichole Ayers, Roscosmos cosmonaut Mission Specialist Kirill Peskov, and astronaut Mission Specialist Takuya Onishi of JAXA, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.

McClain and Ayers are both military officers, McClain a U.S. Army Colonel and Ayers a U.S. Air Force Major. This will be McClain’s second space flight after her selection in 2013 as an astronaut. The Spokane, Washington, native was an instructor pilot in the OH-58D Kiowa Warrior helicopter, graduated from the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School and has more than 2,300 total flight hours, 800 in combat, in rotary and fixed wing aircraft. On her first space flight she spent 204 days as a flight engineer and led two space walks totaling over 13 hours.

Ayers is the first member of NASA’s 2021 astronaut class to receive a crew assignment to the ISS. She is a Colorado native and graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy. She served as an instructor pilot and mission commander in the T-38 as an adversary air (ADAIR) and in the F-22 Raptor pilot while leading multinational and multiservice missions. She has more than 1,300 total flight hours with 200 in combat.

Onishi was a pilot for All Nippon Airways and has 3,700 hours in the Boeing 767. He was selected by JAXA in 2009 and this will be his second space flight after spending 113 days on the station in his first mission. During that mission he robotically captured the Cygnus spacecraft and built a new experimental environment on Kibo, the Japanese experiment module of the ISS. He also became a certified flight director and leads the team operating Kibo from JAXA Mission Control in Tsukuba, Japan.

Peskov will be experiencing his first spaceflight after his selection as a cosmonaut in 2018. After earning his engineering degree from Ulyanovsk Civil Aviation School he was a copilot in the Boeing 757 and 767 for Nordwind and Ikar airlines. He has additional training in zero-gravity ops and skydiving as well as scuba diving and wilderness survival.

FMI: www.nasa.gov/commercialcrew