On Friday NASA publicly announced a decision that has roiled the top levels of the agency's human spaceflight program for several weeks. The space agency named the two crew members who will launch on a Crew Dragon mission set to lift off no earlier than September 24 to the International Space Station.

NASA astronaut Nick Hague will serve as the mission's commander, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov will serve as mission specialist. Instead of a usual complement of four astronauts, a two-person crew was necessitated by the need to use the Crew 9 spacecraft, Freedom, as a rescue vehicle for astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams. They flew to the station in June aboard Boeing's Starliner vehicle, which has been deemed unsafe for them to return in.

Wilmore and Williams will join the Crew-9 increment on board the space station and fly back to Earth with Hague and Gorbunov next February.

The story behind the story

This represents a significant change from the original makeup of the Crew-9 manifest. NASA publicly named the original members of Crew-9 last January, which included three NASA astronauts and Gorbunov. It was to be commanded by Zena Cardman, piloted by Hague, with Stephanie Wilson and Gorbunov as mission specialists.

At the time, the naming of Cardman was significant—she would have been the first rookie astronaut without test pilot experience to command a NASA spaceflight. A 36-year-old geobiologist, Cardman joined NASA in 2017 and is well-regarded by her peers. The assignment of a rookie, non-test pilot to command the Crew-9 mission reflected NASA's confidence in the self-flying capabilities of Dragon, which is intended to reach the station autonomously. The assignment was made by then-chief astronaut Reid Wiseman in 2022, and the Astronaut Office was confident that Cardman, with an experienced hand in Hague at her side, could command the mission.

The need to rescue Wilmore and Williams changed the equation. It fell upon Joe Acaba, a veteran astronaut who became chief of the Astronaut Office in February 2023, to down-select to a new crew manifest. To maintain its ongoing rotation with the Russian space program, one of the crew members needed to be Gorbunov. So Acaba had to pick from Cardman, Hague, and Wilson.

Initially, Acaba stuck with Cardman. She was the original commander of the mission, after all. But this prompted considerable dissent within the Astronaut Office, sources said. While Cardman is respected, and Dragon designed to be fully autonomous, it was asking a lot of her to be the sole NASA representative on board the vehicle. (Russian astronauts, generally, are not trained in depth on piloting US vehicles.) A non-trivial percentage of professional astronauts succumb to space sickness during the initial hours of their spaceflights.

Some members of the astronaut office argued that Hague was the safer choice. An Air Force test pilot, Hague survived a harrowing Soyuz spacecraft abort in 2018, and subsequently flew to space for more than six months in 2019. Hague, these astronauts said, was the safer choice for NASA if the agency truly sought to maximize chances of mission success.

Eventually these dissenters, with some support from the upper echelons of NASA management, prevailed, and Acaba swapped Hague for Cardman. A decision was reached before a Flight Readiness Review meeting on August 24, but it was not publicly announced until this Friday.

NASA’s official comment

“While we’ve changed crew before for a variety of reasons, downsizing crew for this flight was another tough decision to adjust to given that the crew has trained as a crew of four,” Acaba said in a news release issued Friday. “I have the utmost confidence in all our crew, who have been excellent throughout training for the mission. Zena and Stephanie will continue to assist their crewmates ahead of launch, and they exemplify what it means to be a professional astronaut.”

There was also a classy quote in the news release from Cardman, who revealed Friday that her father, Larry Cardman, passed away three weeks ago. “I am deeply proud of our entire crew,” she said. "And I am confident Nick and Alex will step into their roles with excellence. All four of us remain dedicated to the success of this mission, and Stephanie and I look forward to flying when the time is right."

Here's hoping her time comes very, very soon.