As the center of human spaceflight, NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston holds a range of special obligations and advantages. Those consist of being the home of NASA’s astronaut corps.
Among those astronauts– Nick Hague– is now preparing to release to the International Space Station together with Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov on the ninth rotational objective under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. This will be the 3rd launch and 2nd objective to the spaceport station for Hague, who was chosen as a NASA astronaut in 2013 and has actually invested 203 days in area.
Hague was born and raised in Kansas however has actually crisscrossed the nation for college and profession. He made degrees from the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, and he participated in the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base in California. Hague’s military profession has actually taken him to New Mexico, Colorado, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., and consisted of a five-month release to Iraq. Hague moved from the Air Force to the U.S. Space Force in 2020 after acting as the Space Force’s director of test and assessment at the Pentagon.
No complete stranger to brand-new locations, Hague clearly remembers making his very first journey to Johnson when he was speaking with to sign up with NASA’s astronaut corps. “I had no concept what to anticipate, and it was a bit frustrating. I understood everybody was viewing me and evaluating me,” he stated. “Luckily, although I wasn’t picked then, I got another opportunity a couple of years later on. It’s a quite wonderful location.”
Hague finished his astronaut training in July 2015 as part of NASA’s 21st astronaut class. He was the very first astronaut from that group to be designated to an objective, which released in October 2018 however was terminated soon after departure. His next spaceflight happened in 2019, when he signed up with 3 of his schoolmates– NASA astronauts Jessica Meir, Christina Koch, and Andrew Morgan– aboard the International Space Station for Expeditions 59 and 60.
Hague has actually made lots of memories at Johnson, however one that stands apart is his experience working onsite amidst the 2013 federal government shutdown. “I’m active-duty military so I still pertained to work,” he discussed. “I keep in mind being onsite and the center being entirely empty. Having the ability to ride around an empty school on the free-range bikes– it was serene and surreal.” It was likewise a sneak peek of what lots of Johnson staff members experienced throughout the pandemic and how NASA preserves day-and-night assistance for spaceflight operations despite extenuating situations.
Hague now expects another journey to low Earth orbit. NASA and SpaceX authorities presently prepare to introduce the Crew-9 objective no earlier than Wednesday, Sept. 25. The team will take off from Launch Complex 40 from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft.
Hague and Gorbonov will enter of the Expedition 72 team aboard the station.