The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), a national research and development agency, is delighted to announce today that JAXA Astronaut Akihiko Hoshide was selected as a crew member of the International Space Station (ISS) Expedition 64/65. He will be the second Japanese to assume the post of commander on the ISS in leading the 65th Expedition.
Period of stay in space: Approximately six months starting around May of 2020 Mission: Expedition 64 (approx. four months): Activities as the ISS Flight Engineer, mainly consisting of maintenance of the ISS facilities (including “Kibo”), scientific experiments, and manipulation of the Mobile Servicing System (MSS) Expedition 65 (approx. two months): In addition to the above activities, taking the lead as ISS Commander for a successful mission and ensured safety of the crewProject schedule: Training necessary for the long-duration stay on the ISS scheduled to begin around autumn 2019
Space Nation will send the first Space Nation Astronaut to lower orbit next year and then further out every year after that.
When Expedition 56 astronaut Drew Feustel relinquishes the helm of the International Space Station (ISS) to Germany’s Alexander Gerst, early in October, more than a year will elapse with no U.S. citizen in command of the multi-national orbiting outpost. From that date, and throughout the entirety of 2019—for the first time in the station’s two-decade history—we will see a 12-month calendar year without a U.S. ISS Commander. NASA has revealed that no fewer than two European Space Agency (ESA) astronauts will command the ISS during this period, together with three Russian cosmonauts.
When Kononenko, Saint-Jacques and McClain land in early July, Skripochka will take command of Expedition 60 and lead ISS operations until he and Hammock-Koch return to Earth on 22 October, concluding a 200-day increment. After a few days as a two-member crew, Soyuz MS-13 will launch on 15 July, carrying Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Skvortsov, Italian ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano and NASA’s Drew Morgan. When Skripochka and Hammock-Koch depart on 22 October, Parmitano will command Expedition 61 until his own crew returns to Earth in late January 2020. Shorly thereafter, Soyuz MS-13 will launch with two Russians and an as-yet-unnamed U.S. astronaut. In doing so, Parmitano will be the third European—after Belgium’s Frank de Winne and Germany’s Alexander Gerst—to command the station and the first Italian to do so.
Those Commercial Crew missions presently remain in flux, with the unpiloted test-flights of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon and Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner targeted for launch in August 2018, followed by piloted test-flights at year’s end or, more likely, in the first quarter of 2019. Although veteran NASA shuttle and ISS flyers Eric Boe, Doug Hurley, Sunita Williams and former Chief Astronaut Bob Behnken were assigned to the test-flight program in July 2015, it remains to be seen which missions they will actually fly.“The specific flight assignments for the first Commercial Crew flights haven’t been made yet,” Ms. Dean told AmericaSpace, “but it is not a given that the four “commercial crew cadre” members will be on the first two flights—they may be spread among the first several flights. At this point, everyone has been participating in work on both vehicles and they’ll start focusing on one or the other once they’ve been assigned to a specific flight. And there is a certain amount of space station training that everyone will need, as well.”
NASA Director of Operations - Star City, Russia
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine says he’s pushing to have a current NASA center director and former astronaut, Janet Kavandi, be nominated to be his deputy.