NASA assigns two astronauts to SpaceX’s Crew-6 mission in 2023

NASA has selected Dragon’s commander and pilot for SpaceX’s Crew-6 mission. The International Space Station rotation mission is expected to take place in the Spring of 2023.

Initially the final operational flight for SpaceX as part of the Commerical Crew Program, NASA intends to give SpaceX three more flights after Crew-6. The mission will launch from SpaceX’s launch pad at LC-39A on Kennedy Space Center like all previous crewed Dragon missions before. NASA hopes its international partners will fill the other two seats on Crew-6: JAXA, ESA, or even Russia’s Roscosmos.

NASA has assigned two crew members to launch on the agency’s SpaceX Crew-6 mission – the sixth crew rotation flight aboard a Crew Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station.

NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg will serve as spacecraft commander and pilot, respectively, for the mission. The agency’s international partners will assign additional crew members as mission specialists in the future.

The mission is expected to launch in 2023 on a Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Bowen, Hoburg, and the international crew members will join an expedition crew aboard the space station.

This will be Bowen’s fourth trip into space as a veteran of three space shuttle missions: STS-126 in 2008, STS-132 in 2010, and STS-133 in 2011. Bowen has logged more than 40 days in space, including 47 hours, 18 minutes during seven spacewalks. He was born in Cohasset, Massachusetts. He holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, and a master’s degree in ocean engineering from the Joint Program in Applied Ocean Science and Engineering offered by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Falmouth, Massachusetts. In July 2000, Bowen became the first submarine officer selected as an astronaut by NASA.

Hoburg was selected by NASA as an astronaut in 2017 and this will be his first trip to space. He is from Pittsburgh and earned a bachelor’s degree in aeronautics and astronautics from MIT and adoctorate in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of California, Berkeley. At the time of his selection as an astronaut, Hoburg was an assistant professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT. Hoburg’s research focused on efficient methods for design of engineering systems. He also is a commercial pilot with instrument, single-engine, and multi-engine ratings.

NASA press release

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