.As the center of individual spaceflight, NASA's Johnson Area Center in Houston accommodates an assortment of one-of-a-kind obligations and benefits. Those consist of being the home of NASA's rocketeer corps.One of those rocketeers-- Nick Hague-- is currently preparing to launch to the International Space Station alongside Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov on the 9th rotational goal under NASA's Business Crew Course. This will definitely be the 3rd launch as well as second objective to the space station for Hague, that was picked as a NASA astronaut in 2013 and has invested 203 times in space.Hague was born and also increased in Kansas yet has crisscrossed the country for college and also profession. He got degrees from the USA Air Troop School in Colorado and also the Massachusetts Institute of Modern Technology in Cambridge, and he attended the U.S. Flying force Test Pilot College at Edwards Aviation Service Foundation in The Golden State. Hague's military job has taken him to New Mexico, Colorado, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., and also featured a five-month implementation to Iraq. Hague transferred from the Air Force to the USA Area Force in 2020 after functioning as the Area Power's director of test and also evaluation at the Pentagon.Familiar with brand new spots, Hague clearly recollects producing his first trip to Johnson when he was speaking with to join NASA's astronaut corps. "I possessed no tip what to anticipate, and also it was actually a little overwhelming. I knew every person was seeing me and also evaluating me," he claimed. "Fortunately, despite the fact that I wasn't decided on then, I obtained another odds a couple of years eventually. It is actually a quite enchanting area.".Hague accomplished his rocketeer instruction in July 2015 as part of NASA's 21st astronaut lesson. He was the first rocketeer coming from that team to be designated to an objective, which launched in October 2018 yet was actually miscarried shortly after takeoff. His next spaceflight took place in 2019, when he signed up with three of his schoolmates-- NASA rocketeers Jessica Meir, Christina Koch, and also Andrew Morgan-- aboard the International Space Station for Expeditions 59 as well as 60.Hague has actually created several memories at Johnson, but one that sticks out is his expertise functioning onsite in the middle of the 2013 federal government cessation. "I am actually active-duty army so I still related to operate," he clarified. "I don't forget being actually onsite and the center being actually fully empty. Having the ability to ride around a vacant grounds on the free-range bikes-- it was actually relaxed as well as surreal." It was additionally an examine of what a lot of Johnson employees experienced during the pandemic and also how NASA keeps nonstop support for spaceflight functions irrespective of mitigating instances.Hague currently looks ahead to one more quest to low Earth track. NASA as well as SpaceX officials presently plan to release the Crew-9 objective no earlier than Wednesday, Sept. 25. The staff will take off coming from Release Complex 40 from the Peninsula Canaveral Room Force Station in Florida aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and also Dragon space capsule.Hague and also Gorbonov will become members of the Trip 72 team aboard the station. They will certainly join NASA rocketeers Butch Wilmore, Suni Williams, and Don Pettit, and Roscosmos astronauts Alexey Ovchinin and also Ivan Vagner, as well as are going to devote about six months performing scientific research in microgravity and also accomplishing a series of working tasks prior to coming back home.Additional particulars regarding the mission as well as staff can be discovered through complying with the Crew-9 blog post, @commercial_crew on X, or industrial team on Facebook. You may likewise adhere to @astrohague on X and Instagram.