NASA Assigns 5 Astronauts To Future Space Missions

NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) has assigned astronauts for the upcoming International Space Station (ISS) missions. Five astronauts have been assigned to the ISS space missions. The announcement has been made officially on 29 March 2017, Wednesday.

According to Hindustan Times, 5 astronauts named Nick Hague, Shannon Walker, Joe Acaba, Serena Aunon- Chancellor, and Ricky Arnold were selected for the crew team by NASA for taking part in upcoming international space station missions. As per the reports, these astronauts have already started their training sessions for the missions which will be launched in the last of the year 2017 or throughout the year 2018.

"There's plenty of work to be done at the space station, and the research opportunities are almost limitless. These folks are all going to do great work and bring a lot of value to their crewmates," Chris Cassidy, Astronaut Office chief at the Johnson Space Center of NASA located in Houston, said. The plenty of work simply means the busy schedule of training for each astronaut regarding the space station systems.

NDTV reported that astronaut Acaba has been assigned to the Expedition 53 and 54 crews and will be the first to launch. Expedition 53 and 54 includes astronaut Alexander Misurkin of the Russian space agency Roscosmos and Vande Hei of NASA. It is decided that these astronauts will be launching aboard in September 2017, a Soyuz spacecraft. For Acaba, Walker will be trained as a backup astronaut.

Arnold is assigned to Expeditions 55 and 56, along with NASA's Dew Feustel and an astronaut from Russian Roscosmos. They will be launching in March 2018. Hague and Aunon-Chancellor are the first time fliers and will be falling into the standard rotation for NASA astronauts.

Hague is assigned to NASA's Expeditions 57 and 58 launching in September 2018 with other two Russian astronauts. Aunon-Chancellor will be joining Expedition 58 and 59 launching in November 2018 with one Russian cosmonaut and a Canadian Space Agency astronaut David Saint-Jacques.