After she was dropped from a mission to the International Space Station more than two years ago National Aeronautics and Space Administration astronaut Jeanette Epps has been selected as part of a crew that will travel to the space station next year. Epps will become the first Black woman to board the ISS.
In 2018, Epps was scheduled to fly on a Russian spacecraft to become the space station's first Black crew member. At the last minute, Epps was removed from the mission and NASA didn't provide an explanation.
NASA officially announced Epps's new mission Tuesday and said she would be one of the astronauts that would be boarding Boeing's still-in-development Starliner spacecraft. Epps will join astronauts Sunita Williams and Josh Cassada for a launch sometime next year. Boeing is expected to conduct test flights for its new vehicle in the coming months.
Since the start of manned space flight in the early 1960s, more than a dozen Black Americans have traveled to space. The first Black astronaut to do so was Guion Bluford in 1983. But Epps mission will be different because she will be required to live and work aboard the ISS for an extended period. A typical mission aboard the ISS requires astronauts to spend months on the orbiting laboratory conducting experiments and maintenance.
Epps, who has a doctorate in aerospace engineering, joined NASA's astronaut corps in 2019. Before that, Epps served as a technical intelligence officer with the CIA for seven years.
As well as becoming the first Black woman ISS crew member Epps will be part of the crew of Boeing's first spacecraft. Unlike Tesla, which has already launched a manned mission to space using its Crew Dragon capsule, Boeing still has to hit several milestones before it is allowed to launch humans into space.
Boeing must first prove that its vehicle can reach space without any issues through repeated unmanned orbital flight tests. The company's first unmanned flight, which took place in December 2019, was riddled with software errors. As a result of these issues Boeing was forced to bring its vehicle back to earth ahead of schedule after failing to dock with the ISS. Boeing is scheduled to launch a do-over mission later this year.
