Four crew members are preparing to launch for a long-duration stay aboard the International Space Station as part of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-10 mission.
NASA astronauts Commander Anne McClain and Pilot Nichole Ayers, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Mission Specialist Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Mission Specialist Kirill Peskov will join astronauts at the orbiting laboratory no earlier than February 2025. The flight is the 10th crew rotation with SpaceX to the station as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.
While aboard, the crew will conduct scientific investigations and technology demonstrations to help prepare humans for future missions and benefit people on Earth.
This will be McClain’s second spaceflight. The US Army Colonel spent 204 days as a flight engineer during Expeditions 58 and 59 and was the lead on two spacewalks, totalling 13 hours and 8 minutes. Since then, she has served in various roles, including branch chief and space station assistant to NASA’s Astronaut Office chief.
The Crew-10 mission will also be Onishi’s second trip to the space station. After being selected by JAXA in 2009, he flew as a flight engineer for Expeditions 48 and 49 and became the first Japanese astronaut to robotically capture the Cygnus spacecraft. He also constructed a new experimental environment aboard Kibo, the station’s Japanese experiment module.
Ayers is a major in the US Air Force and the first member of NASA’s 2021 astronaut class named to a crew. She has served as an instructor pilot and mission commander in the T-38 ADAIR and F-22 Raptor, leading multinational and multiservice missions worldwide and accumulating more than 1,400 total flight hours, including more than 200 in combat.
Assigned as a test-cosmonaut in 2020, the Crew-10 mission will be Peskov’s first spaceflight.
People have lived and worked continuously aboard the International Space Station for over 20 years. The station is a critical testbed for NASA to understand and overcome the challenges of long-duration spaceflight and to expand commercial opportunities in low Earth orbit.
