NASA Names Half-sized Crew 9 - FAA Clears Falcon 9 to Fly

Friday afternoon, NASA announced the downsized crew for the Crew-9 Mission to the ISS, a necessity brought on by flying the Starliner home autonomously and having Starliner Astronauts move to the Crew-9 vehicle to come home. 

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.

Mission Commander Zena Cardman and Mission Specialist Stephanie Wilson will be reassigned to some unnamed future mission.

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 source article notes that there was some division in the astronaut office, with a side that wanted Cardman to remain in the mission while others thought a more experienced astronaut would be safer than a "rookie, non-test pilot" and the last thing they need is another problem to explain now.  Hague, after all, is an Air Force-trained test pilot, survived a harrowing Soyuz mission abort in 2018, and then flew to space for more than six months in 2019. He simply has much more experience than Cardman.

The Crew-9 flying up in September will be "the two doods" in the middle - Stephanie Wilson (L) and Zena Cardman (R) will be helping as much as they can for as long as they're needed.

Final words to Zena Cardman:

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."

I've got to hope she doesn't have to wait too long for that next mission.

FAA Says Falcon 9 May Return to Flight

But they really want to see that failure analysis.

The FAA announced this evening (August 30, Eastern) that Falcon 9 may resume flying. No particular reason is cited in the article. Maybe someone with sense realized how stupid and corrupt the agency appeared for citing safety when the autonomously-flying rocket wasn't within miles of any people and hundreds of miles from land. The only people within a few hundred miles were the trained crew that are stationed in a ship a few miles from the landing drone, and then drive over to it to aid in securing the rocket and drone for transport. The rocket landed on a recovery drone that's tiny compared to the hundreds of miles of open ocean the booster crosses to reach it, so navigation was fine. It's hard to imagine how this was more dangerous than any other country or company dropping a booster in the Atlantic.

The grounding lasted less than two days.

NextSpaceflight.com has been showing Starlink launches early Saturday morning (ET) from Vandenberg, early Sunday morning from Cape Canaveral, and Polaris Dawn early Monday morning at the same 3:38 AM time they've been focused on.