The initial two seats of the 6th full-fledged NASA team mission sent off by SpaceX have been filled.
NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg will both fly on board the Crew-6 mission, which is because of launch to the International Space Station in 2023, as per a NASA statement published Dec. 16.
Bowen will serve as spacecraft commander and Hoburg as its pilot, with two mission experts to be allocated at a future date by international partners on the station, the statement noted.
Bowen is a spaceflight veteran who has finished three stays on NASA’s space transport fleet; Crew-6 will be his first long-duration visit to the orbiting laboratory. During his past missions, Bowen led seven spacewalks, and he recently served as a submarine official.
Hoburg is a rookie astronaut who was selected in 2017. At the time, he was an assistant professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT who focused on engineering systems. He likewise holds a commercial pilot license and is one of NASA’s 18 “Artemis team” astronauts, from whom the organization will pick the crewmembers for its Artemis 3 mission to return humans to the surface of the moon.
