Kayla Barron Joins NASA’s SpaceX Crew-3 Mission to Space Station
HOUSTON (NASA PR) — NASA has assigned Kayla Barron to serve as a mission specialist for the agency’s SpaceX Crew-3 mission to the International Space Station, which is targeted to launch as early as Oct. 23.
This will be the first spaceflight for Barron, who became a NASA astronaut in January 2020 after completing two years of training. She will join NASA astronauts Raja Chari and Tom Marshburn, as the mission’s commander and pilot, respectively, and ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Matthias Maurer, who also will serve as a mission specialist.
This will be the third crew rotation mission on SpaceX’s human space transportation system and its fourth flight with astronauts, including the Demo-2 test flight, to the space station through NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.
Barron was born in Pocatello, Idaho, but considers Richland, Washington, her hometown. She earned a bachelor’s degree in systems engineering from the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, in 2010. She earned a master’s degree in nuclear engineering from the University of Cambridge, in England, in 2011, as Gates Cambridge Scholar. Lt. Cmdr. Barron earned her submarine warfare officer qualification and deployed three times while serving aboard the USS Maine. At the time of her selection as an astronaut candidate in 2017, she was serving as the flag aide to the superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy.
NASA previously assigned Chari, Marshburn, and Maurer to the mission in December 2020. This will be the first spaceflight for Chari and Maurer. It will be the third spaceflight for Marshburn, who previously served as a crew member of the space shuttle STS-127 mission in 2009 and Expedition 34/35 aboard the space station, which concluded in 2013.
When Barron, Chari, Marshburn, and Maurer arrive at the orbiting laboratory, they will become expedition crew members for the duration of their six-month science mission. The crew will have a slight overlap with the Crew-2 astronauts, who arrived April 24. This will mark the second time commercial crew missions have overlapped on the station. The Crew-1 astronauts, who ended their mission with a splashdown off the coast of Panama City, Florida, on Sunday, May 2, were aboard the station with the Crew-2 astronauts for a seven-day direct crew handover. Increasing the total number of astronauts aboard the station enables the agency to boost the number of science investigations conducted in the unique microgravity environment.
Follow the Crew-3 astronauts on social media:
Kayla Barron:
Instagram: @Astro_Kayla
Facebook: NASA Astronaut Kayla Barron
Raja Chari:
Twitter: @Astro_Raja
Instagram: @Astro_Raja
Facebook: NASA Astronaut Raja Chari
Tom Marshburn:
Twitter: @AstroMarshburn
Matthias Maurer:
Twitter: @Astro_Matthias
Instagram: @ESAMatthiasMaurer
Facebook: Matthias Maurer
Find more information on NASA’s Commercial Crew Program at:
4 responses to “Kayla Barron Joins NASA’s SpaceX Crew-3 Mission to Space Station”
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I guess that NASA is still negotiating with the Russians. NASA would like to have Russian cosmonauts flying on the commercial crew vehicles and NASA astronauts on Soyuz to insure that there is always representation from both NASA and Russia on ISS.
I’m not sure NASA really cares about cosmonauts flying on Commercial Crew, so much as being able to get astronauts on Soyuz for redundant access andcontinued astronaut presence on the ISS without scheduling issues related to the 2 IDSS docking locations – without having to write a check to Roscosmos.
The seat trade NASA did with Axiom for a Soyuz seat gave them just that.
No, NASA didn’t write Roscosmos a check for Vande Hei’s seat, NASA had Axiom write the check. So a check was still written which is the only reason the Russians would have forked over the seat. It wasn’t a “swap,” it was a purchase. It was also in essence, money laundering on NASA’s part.
In return, Axiom supposedly gets a seat on a future CC mission. How’s that supposed to work? Axiom is flying short-term tourists to ISS. NASA is flying astronauts there for 6-month tours. If a space tourist takes one of the seats on a CC mission, NASA is down one astronaut and the working staff on ISS drops back to six – or fewer given the Russian plans to maximize tourism dollars at the cost of further minimizing Russian cosmonaut presence.
Then there’s the not-so-little problem of how one gets a short-term tourist back to the ground after he’s come up on a ship whose other occupants are going to be staying for 6 months.
If NASA wants the seat it “gave” to Axiom back, it will have to either pay for it in cash or “barter” something else to Axiom in its place. The whole arrangement is complete unsustainable and probably criminal to boot.
It’s also stupid and unnecessary. The only purpose notional seat-swapping seems to actually serve that can’t easily be handled in other ways is to continue the “optics” of ” U.S.-Russian “cooperation” in space. Well, as we are seeing, there is no real cooperation actually going on worthy of the name so we should simply acknowledge reality, tolerate the diminished Russian ISS presence for as long as ISS – or at least Russianpresence onit – lasts and bid them a not-so-fond farewell when they either pull out in 2025 or earlier, or ISS is decommissioned.
But the Russians aren’t interested. They’d much prefer to sell the Soyuz seats to plutocrat tourists. I say let them. There is no real point to seat swapping anyway. Continuous American presence on ISS can be guaranteed by simply continuing to overlap the CC missions as was recently done for Crew-1 and Crew-2. If the Russians aren’t worried about a shortage of Russians on ISS, why should we be?