NASA astronaut gets second shot at ISS stint after failed launch
Nick Hague and his cosmonaut colleague will fly again on a Soyuz rocket from Russia.
NASA astronaut Nick Hague prepares ahead of his October 2018 launch to the ISS. He will get to try again in 2019.
NASA astronaut Nick Hague thought he was going to the International Space Station for the first time in October, but a rocket failure put a temporary halt to his dream of living and working in space. The dream lives on, however, as NASA has rescheduled Hague for a Feb. 28, 2019 launch to the ISS.
Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin was also on the aborted Soyuz launch, and he's set to join Hague and NASA astronaut Christina Koch on the upcoming mission.
This will be Koch's first trip to space, but her crewmates already have space bragging rights. "Flight dynamics specialists determined Hague and Ovchinin achieved enough altitude on their aborted climb to orbit to qualify for previous spaceflight status, making this Hague's second spaceflight and Ovchinin's third," NASA says.
Despite experiencing the harrowing emergency landing, Hague said he wasn't discouraged from wanting to go to space in the future.
A fresh group of three space travelers successfully launched to the ISS on Monday, bringing the station's crew up to six.
European Space Agency's Alexander Gerst, NASA's Serena Auñón-Chancellor and Roscosmos' Sergey Prokopyev have been on the ISS since June. They are scheduled to return to Earth on Dec. 20, making room for Hague's mission to arrive in February.
