NASA has assigned astronaut Jonny Kim to serve as a flight engineer and member of the upcoming Expedition 72/73 crew to the International Space Station (ISS). The expedition will launch on the Roscosmos Soyuz MS-27 spacecraft in March 2025. It will be Kim’s first mission to the ISS.
Kim is scheduled to stay on the ISS for eight months. While onboard the orbiting laboratory, he will conduct scientific investigations and technology demonstrations to help prepare the crew for future space missions.
NASA selected Kim as an astronaut in 2017. After completing the initial astronaut candidate training, he supported mission and crew operations in various roles, including as the Expedition 65 lead operations officer, T-38 operations liaison, and space station capcom chief engineer.
Kim is a United States Navy lieutenant commander and dual-designated naval aviator and flight surgeon. He also served as an enlisted Navy SEAL. Kim holds a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from the University of San Diego and a medical degree from Harvard Medical School in Boston, and completed his internship with the Harvard Affiliated Emergency Medicine Residency at Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
The ISS remains a critical testbed for NASA to understand the challenges of long-duration spaceflight and expand commercial opportunities in low Earth orbit. As commercial companies focus on providing human space transportation services and destinations as part of a robust low Earth orbit economy, NASA is able to more fully focus its resources on deep space missions to the Moon and Mars.
Kim will be accompanied on the Soyuz MS-27 launch by Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky, who will also remain on the ISS for eight months.
