Hague, Gorbunov Get To Stay on Crew-9

NASA announced today that NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov will be the two Crew-9 members who get to remain on the September mission to the International Space Station. NASA is reducing the crew size because two of the seats are needed to return the NASA astronauts who flew to the ISS on Boeing’s Starliner Crew Flight Test.  Zena Cardman, who had been assigned as Commander, and Stephanie Wilson, a mission specialist, will have to wait for another assignment.

NASA Chief Astronaut Joe Acaba made the decision on who got to stay onboard and who had to stay behind.

NASA said Acaba “had to balance flying a NASA crew member with previous spaceflight experience to command the flight, while ensuring NASA maintains an integrated crew with a Roscosmos cosmonaut who can operate their critical systems for continued, safe station operations.”

Keeping Gorbunov on the crew was widely expected since U.S. astronauts and Russian cosmonauts routinely fly on each other’s spacecraft to ensure that at least one American and one Russian are aboard the ISS to operate the interdependent U.S. and Russian segments.  Russia also is getting ready for a crew exchange and NASA astronaut Don Pettit will launch to ISS on Soyuz MS-26 on September 11.

The decision to keep Hague and not Cardman was more surprising. She was the commander of the mission. But she also is a rookie.

Hague will be on his third spaceflight and holds the distinction of having survived an in-flight launch abort on a Russian rocket in October 2018. He and Russian cosmonaut Aleksey Ovchinin lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on a Soyuz FG rocket, but one of the four solid rocket boosters strapped to the side hit the rocket when it detached two minutes and 45 seconds later. The Soyuz rocket is designed with automated abort systems that separated their capsule and boosted it high enough to escape the disintegrating rocket and make a safe landing on the steppes of Kazakhstan 34 minutes later.

NASA decided that the capsule, Soyuz MS-10, rose high enough that they count that episode as a spaceflight.

Hague and Ovchinin got all the way to the ISS on their second try in February 2019 on Soyuz MS-12.

They’ll be reunited again this time.  Ovchinin is commanding the Soyuz MS-26 mission that launches on September 11 with Pettit and Roscosmos cosmonaut Ivan Wagner.

Cardman posted on X that while the decision was “heartbreaking,” it also is an “honor” and while all four of them wish they could fly together “we choose without hesitation to be part of something much larger than ourselves.”

Handing the helm to @AstroHague is both heartbreaking and an honor. Nick and Alex are truly an excellent team, and they will be ready to step up. I only wish @Astro_Stephanie, Nick, Alex, and I could fly together, but we choose without hesitation to be part of something much… pic.twitter.com/oYTN6gSxob

— Zena Cardman (@zenanaut) August 30, 2024

Wilson also wished her colleagues success.  This would have been her fourth spaceflight. She flew on three space shuttle missions in 2006, 2007, and 2010, accumulating 42 days in space.

Honored to have trained with @zenanaut, @AstroHague and Alex as part of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-9. Wishing Nick and Alex continued success with Crew-9, and an excellent mission as they join ISS Expedition 72. https://t.co/I7WYG0kGVe pic.twitter.com/CgXLK2biUp

— Stephanie Wilson (@Astro_Stephanie) August 30, 2024

Crew-9 is currently scheduled to launch on September 24. It will be the first crewed launch from SpaceX’s Space Launch Complex-40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station adjacent to Kennedy Space Center.  Until now, Crew Dragon has always launched from KSC’s Launch Complex 39-A, but that launch pad is needed for an unrelated NASA launch, Europa Clipper, using SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy. SLC-40 is used for launching satellites, but because of the increasing launch rate, SpaceX decided some years ago to retrofit it as a second crewed launch pad.

The change to Crew-9 is because two NASA astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, flew to the ISS on Boeing’s Starliner Crew Flight Test. The spacecraft experienced propulsion problems and NASA decided to return it to Earth empty, leaving Butch and Suni on the ISS to become part of Crew-9 and return with them next February instead.