NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov will head to the International Space Station next week as part of a “rescue” mission. The spacecraft is scheduled to return in February 2025 with Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams eventually on board.
“The crew will lift off from Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Station in Florida aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft. Hague and Gorbonov will become members of the Expedition 72 crew aboard the station,” a recent press release from the space agency explained.
This will be SpaceX’s ninth crew rotation mission to the ISS under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. The Elon Musk-led company has so far flown nine crewed flights into space for NASA, as well as a few commercial missions.
Nick Hague will serve as commander of Crew 9, and Gorbunov will serve as mission specialist aboard the shortened two-crew flight. The spacecraft will dock with the ISS for about six months, as the duo join Wilmore and Williams, as well as three other astronauts, for scientific investigations.
According to the mission overview shared by NASA, Dragon will accelerate to about 17,500 mph to dock with the space station after liftoff. They will be welcomed aboard by Expedition 71 before conducting several days of transfer activities with the departing astronauts on the NASA-SpaceX Crew-8 mission.
Crew 9 will welcome two Dragon spacecraft (including NASA’s SpaceX 31st commercial resupply services mission and NASA’s SpaceX Crew 10) and two Roscosmos-led cargo deliveries on Progress 90 and 91 during their stay.
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