{"id":11935,"date":"2020-12-29T21:01:12","date_gmt":"2020-12-29T13:01:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/three-astronauts-assigned-to-crew-dragon-mission-in-late-2021\/"},"modified":"2020-12-29T21:01:12","modified_gmt":"2020-12-29T13:01:12","slug":"three-astronauts-assigned-to-crew-dragon-mission-in-late-2021","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/three-astronauts-assigned-to-crew-dragon-mission-in-late-2021\/","title":{"rendered":"Three astronauts assigned to Crew Dragon mission in late 2021"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
The members of the SpaceX Crew-3 mission to the International Space Station. Pictured from left are NASA astronaut Raja Chari, European Space Agency astronaut Matthias Maurer, and NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn. Credit: NASA\/ESA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Rookie NASA astronaut Raja Chari \u2014 a former U.S. Air Force fighter pilot \u2014 veteran physician-astronaut Tom Marshburn, and European Space Agency astronaut Matthias Maurer have been assigned to fly to the International Space Station on a SpaceX Crew Dragon spaceship in the fall of 2021.<\/p>\n

A fourth crew member will be added to the mission at a later date, following a review by NASA and its international partners, the U.S. space agency said in a Dec. 14 announcement.<\/p>\n

Chari, Marshburn, Maurer, and the fourth crew member will launch on the third operational flight of a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule to the International Space Station. The mission, designated Crew-3, will launch in the fall of 2021 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and last into the spring of 2022.<\/p>\n

The fourth member of the Crew-3 team might be a Russian cosmonaut.<\/p>\n

Kathy Lueders, head of NASA\u2019s human spaceflight directorate, told Spaceflight Now in November that NASA and Roscosmos aim to finalize a no-funds-exchanged agreement to fly Russian cosmonauts to the space station on U.S. crew vehicles, and continue launching U.S. astronauts on Russian Soyuz spacecraft.<\/p>\n

The agreement, if signed, would help ensure the Russian and U.S. segments of the space station always have at least one fully-trained crew member, even if problems ground the Soyuz, Crew Dragon, or Boeing\u2019s Starliner crew capsule, once it begins ferry flights to the orbiting research outpost.<\/p>\n

Lueders said last month that the agreement could be in place for the third operational Crew Dragon rotation flight to the space station next fall, along with a Russian Soyuz mission set for launch in the same timeframe.<\/p>\n

The third Crew Dragon rotation mission will be commanded by Raja Chari, NASA said Dec. 14.<\/p>\n

Chari, 43, is a colonel in the Air Force and will make his first trip to space on the Crew-3 mission. He was born in Milwaukee and raised in Cedar Falls, Iowa, before earning a bachelor\u2019s degree in aeronautical engineering from the U.S. Air Force Academy and a master\u2019s degree in aeronautics and astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.<\/p>\n

Before his selection as a NASA astronaut in 2017, Chari flew F-15E combat missions in Operation Iraqi Freedom, graduated from the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School, and served as commander of the 461st Flight Test Squadron and director of the F-35 Integrated Test Force.<\/p>\n

\"\"
A SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft approaches the International Space Station on Nov. 17 with the Crew-1 astronauts. Credit: NASA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Veteran astronaut Tom Marshburn will fly as pilot on the Crew-3 mission. Marshburn, a 60-year-old medical doctor, was born in Statesville, North Carolina, and graduated from Davidson College with a bachelor\u2019s degree in physics and earned a master\u2019s degree in physics from the University of Virginia.<\/p>\n

Marshburn later graduated with a doctorate of medicine from Wake Forest University and master\u2019s degree in medical science from the University of Texas Medical Branch. After working as an emergency physician, Marshburn joined NASA as a flight surgeon and supported astronauts flying on the Russian Mir space station, multiple space shuttle missions, and crews on the International Space Station.<\/p>\n

NASA selected Marshburn as an astronaut in 2004, and he flew as a mission specialist aboard the space shuttle Endeavour on the STS-127 mission in July 2009. Marshburn\u2019s second mission was a long-duration expedition on the International Space Station, during which he launched and landed on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.<\/p>\n

Marshburn has logged 161 days in space on his two previous missions.<\/p>\n

European Space Agency astronaut Matthias Maurer, 50, will fly as a mission specialist on the Crew-3 mission.<\/p>\n

Maurer is from Sankt Wendel in the German state of Saarland. Like Chari, Maurer will be flying into space for the first time.<\/p>\n

ESA selected Maurer to join its astronauts corps in 2015. Before becoming an astronaut, Maurer graduated with a doctorate in materials science engineering from the Institute of Materials Sciences of the Technical University in Aachen, Germany, and began working at ESA in 2010 as a crew support engineer.<\/p>\n

Chari, Marshburn, and Maurer\u2019s six-month expedition will overlap for a few days or weeks with the Crew-2 mission, which is set to launch in the spring of 2021 to take over from the Crew-1 astronauts currently on the International Space Station.<\/p>\n

Email the author.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The members of the SpaceX Crew-3 mission to the International Space Station. Pictured from left are NASA astronaut Raja Chari, European Space Agency astronaut Matthias Maurer, and NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn. Credit: NASA\/ESA Rookie NASA astronaut Raja Chari \u2014 a former U.S. Air Force fighter pilot \u2014 veteran physician-astronaut Tom Marshburn, and European Space Agency […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1668,524,291,235,1768,831,479,455],"class_list":["post-11935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-astronauts","tag-commercial-crew","tag-commercial-space","tag-crew-dragon","tag-crew-3","tag-european-space-agency","tag-falcon-9","tag-germany"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11935"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11935\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}