These 3 astronauts will start SpaceX’s Crew-3 mission to the World Put Location in 2021

NASA and the European Put Company (ESA) indulge in selected a trio of astronauts to waft to location as phase of SpaceX’s Crew-3 mission. 

SpaceX launched its Crew-1 mission — the company’s first fully-operational crewed mission to location — to the World Put Location in November. Now, as SpaceX readies for its Crew-2 mission, place of abode to start in the spring of 2021, three astronauts for the next crewed mission to the location location were introduced.

Crew-3 will include NASA astronauts Raja Chari (who will inspire as commander of the mission) and Tom Marshburn (who will inspire as pilot), as smartly as ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer (who will inspire as a mission specialist), NASA and ESA introduced Monday (Dec. 14). A fourth crew member will be introduced later, filling the on hand seats in SpaceX’s Crew Dragon pill. 

Crew-3 is scheduled to start from NASA’s Kennedy Put Heart in Florida sometime in the fall of 2021. 

Associated: SpaceX’s historical Demo-2 crewed check flight in photos

This mission will be Chari’s first spaceflight. A ragged U.S. Air Power colonel, Chari is an skilled check pilot who has gathered larger than 2,500 hours of flight time. Chari is also a member of the Artemis Crew — a newly introduced community of 18 NASA astronauts who will originate up training for missions all the contrivance in which by technique of the agency’s dauntless Artemis program. 

Marshburn is a scientific doctor who served in the astronaut corps as a flight surgeon at NASA’s Johnson Put Heart in Houston and turned scientific operations lead for the location location. The Crew-3 flight will be Marshburn’s third shuttle to the location location and his 2d long-length mission, following a stint as a location crew member in 2009 and his 2d flight in 2013. 

Crew-3 will even be Maurer’s first flight to location. The ESA astronaut is from Sankt Wendel in the German convey of Saarland. Maurer has labored in engineering and learn and spent 16 days training underwater at the location analog facility NEEMO (NASA’s Shameful Atmosphere Mission Operations). 

The trio and their fourth crew member will employ six months aboard the location location, overlapping with the Crew-2’s slay aboard the orbiting lab. 

Whereas Crew-3 will be SpaceX’s third crew rotation mission to location, it will be the company’s fourth astronaut start; earlier than Crew-1, SpaceX efficiently carried out its Demo-2 mission earlier this One year. Demo-2 demonstrated that the company’s Crew Dragon automobile could well perhaps safely ferry astronauts to and from the World Put Location. With the success of Demo-2, SpaceX went on to start Crew-1 on Nov. 14. 

These commercial crew missions mean that NASA is yet again ready to start astronauts from the US as an different of from Kazakhstan on Russian Soyuz vehicles, as has been required since the agency’s shuttle program ended in 2011. 

E mail Chelsea Gohd at [email protected] or be conscious her on Twitter @chelsea_gohd. Prepare us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Fb.