Washington, Aug 31 (UNI) NASA has confirmed that it has stripped the Crew 9 replacement mission team to the International Space station (ISS) to include only a single American astronaut and one Russian cosmonaut so that the stranded Boeing Starliner personnel Barry Wilmore and Sunita Willaims can fill out the remaining places on the ISS rotation for the next six months, the US space agency announced in a press release on Friday.
“NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov will launch no earlier than Tuesday, September 24, on the agency’s SpaceX Crew-9 mission to the ISS,” the release said. “NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Stephanie Wilson, previously announced as crewmates, are eligible for reassignment on a future mission.”
The announcement accompanies NASA’s decision to fly the troubled Boeing Starliner that Wilmore and Williams flew to the ISS in June back to Earth unmanned and by remote control rather than risk the lives of the astronauts on it.
Five of the Starliner’s 28 maneuvering thrusters failed and five separate helium leaks were recorded on the flight – the spacecraft’s first with a human crew.
Hague and Gorbunov will fly to the space station as commander and mission specialist on a previously used SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, NASA said.
