NASA SpaceX Crew-6 Mission Appoints Two Astronauts

NASA has allocated two crew members to the SpaceX Crew-6 mission, which will be the agency’s sixth crew rotation journey to the International Space Station on a Crew Dragon spacecraft. Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg, both NASA astronauts, will lead the expedition as spacecraft commander and pilot, respectively. In the future, the agency’s overseas partners will assign additional crew members to serve as mission specialists.

The mission is scheduled to launch in 2023 on a Falcon 9 rocket from NASA Kennedy Space Center in Florida’s Launch Complex 39A. Bowen, Hoburg, and the international crew members will join a space station expedition crew. Bowen, a veteran of three space shuttle flights (STS-126 in 2008, STS-132 in 2010, and STS-133 in 2011), will make his fourth trip into space. Bowen has spent more than 40 days in space, including seven spacewalks totaling 47 hours and 18 minutes.

He was born in the Massachusetts town of Cohasset. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and a master’s degree in ocean engineering from the Joint Program in Applied Ocean Science and Engineering at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Falmouth, Massachusetts. Bowen was the first submarine officer to be selected as an astronaut by NASA in July 2000.

Hoburg was chosen as an astronaut by NASA in 2017, and this will be his first mission to orbit. He graduated from MIT with a bachelor’s degree in aeronautics and astronautics and the University of California, Berkeley with a doctorate in electrical engineering and computer science. Hoburg was an assistant professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT when he was chosen as an astronaut.