NASA
NASA astronaut Nick Hague currently is at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia, with his crewmate Alexey Ovchinin of the Russian space agency Roscosmos. They will launch from Baikonur, Kazakhstan, on the Russian Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft at 4:39 a.m. (2:39 p.m. Baikonur time) Oct. 11. They are scheduled to return to Earth in April.
The launch to the International Space Station will be the first spaceflight for Hague.
in October.
Hague is a native of Hoxie, Kansas, and a colonel in the U.S. Air Force. He is part of the 2013 NASA astronaut class and will be the first of his class to go to space. Prior to his selection, he was part of the Air Force Fellows program in Washington, where he worked as an adviser to the U.S. Senate on matters of national defense and foreign policy.
Hague earned a bachelor’s degree in astronautical engineering from the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and a master’s degree in aeronautical and astronautical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston.
After a six-hour journey to orbit, Hague and Ovchinin will arrive at the station and join fellow NASA astronaut Serena Auñón-Chancellor, Expedition 57 Commander Alexander Gerst of ESA (European Space Agency), and Sergey Prokopyev of Roscosmos, bringing the station’s crew complement to five.
During a planned six-month mission, station crew members will take part in about 250 research investigations and technology demonstrations not possible on Earth to advance scientific knowledge of Earth, space, physical and biological sciences. Science conducted on the space station continues to yield benefits for humanity and will enable future long-duration human and robotic exploration into deep space, including the Moon and Mars.
They’re also expected to be onboard the space station during the first uncrewed test flights of the SpaceX Crew Dragon and Boeing CST-100 Starliner as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, which will return astronaut launches to U.S. soil.
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