NASA and Elon Musk’s industrial rocket firm SpaceX launched a brand new four-astronaut crew on a flight to the International Space Station early on Friday, the primary crew ever propelled towards orbit by a rocket booster recycled from a earlier spaceflight. The crew has an assault helicopter pilot, a former Air France pilot, a Japanese rocket scientist and an oceanographer.
The 4 veteran astronauts ought to attain the International Space Station on Saturday for a six-month keep, following Friday’s liftoff from NASAs Kennedy Space Center.
A short take a look at every:
Shane Kimbrough, 53, the flight’s commander, is a retired Army colonel who led a helicopter platoon in the course of the 1991 Gulf War. His love of house got here early: His grandparents lived close to Floridas Kennedy Space Center. The son of an Army aviator who flew in Vietnam, Kimbrough grew up in Atlanta. He taught math on the U.S. Military Academy and jumped out of planes for the Army, earlier than transferring to Houston in 2000 to work with NASAs shuttle coaching plane. He turned an astronaut in 2004, flying on the shuttle in 2008 and launching eight years later in a Russian capsule to the house station he helped construct. He and spouse Robbie have three grown youngsters.
Megan McArthur, 49, the pilot, is flying in the identical seat as husband Bob Behnken did throughout SpaceX’s debut crew launch almost a yr in the past. This time, he was the one with their 7-year-old son, Theo, waving goodbye. It’s been 11 years since McArthur final rocketed into orbit, aboard a shuttle on NASAs closing Hubble Space Telescope restore mission. Shes keen to see the house station, after 20 years as an astronaut. Born in Hawaii however raised throughout in a Navy household, McArthur performed graduate analysis in underwater acoustics on the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, led diving expeditions and examined water tools. She turned an astronaut in 2000.
Thomas Pesquet, 43, was flying for Air France when the European Space Agency selected him as an astronaut 12 years in the past. The son of schoolteachers, Pesquet discovered house cool whereas rising up in Normandy, and earned a level in spacecraft design. He joined the French Space Agency as an engineer in 2002. Two years later, Air France tapped him for its flight coaching program. He logged 2,300 flight hours on industrial airliners earlier than turning into an astronaut in 2009. Pesquet launched on a Russian Soyuz rocket to the house station in 2016 for a six-month mission. His longtime associate, Anne Mottet, works for the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.
Akihiko Hoshide, 52, joined the Japanese Space Agency proper out of faculty in 1992 as an engineer, engaged on the H-II rocket. He made the astronaut minimize seven years later and helped develop Japans Kibo lab for the house station. He put in Kibo, or Hope, in 2008, launching aboard shuttle Discovery. Hoshide returned to the station in 2012 for six months, flying from Kazakhstan. Hell be a part of Japans Soichi Noguchi on the station, earlier than Noguchi departs subsequent week on his personal SpaceX trip. It can be very nice to see him and we’ve the luxurious of hugging in orbit, not just like the scenario on the bottom as a result of of the pandemic, Hoshide stated. Hes married with an 11-year-old son.
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