Prepare for liftoff!
Lieutenant Colonel Jasmin Moghbeli, age 40 from Baldwin, will be the commander of a four-person team dubbed Crew-7 for SpaceX’s next mission, which is scheduled to launch on Friday, Aug. 25.
The mission will mark Moghbeli’s first space flight.
According to NASA, Moghbeli will be leading a team of three other international astronauts — ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Andreas Mogensen, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Satoshi Furukawa, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov — on a flight up to the International Space Station, or ISS.
Reports from the agency have confirmed that the quartet completed their rehearsal, and the mission is a go for launch on Friday, Aug. 25 at 3:50 a.m. EDT at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center.
Led by Moghbeli, the quartet will take off in the SpaceX Dragon Endurance spacecraft atop the company’s Falcon 9 rocket, piloted by Mogensen.
Once they reach the ISS, nearly 24 hours after launch, they will stay on the station for six months, where they will research microgravity.
The team currently on the ISS will depart a week after Crew-7 arrives.
Moghbeli was born in Germany but emigrated with her family to Baldwin, which she considers her hometown.
After graduating from Baldwin High School, she went to MIT for an aerospace engineering degree.
She then became a Second Lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps starting in 2005, and following her three overseas deployments and 150 combat missions, she received her master's in aerospace engineering from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School.
Moghbeli graduated from the NASA Astronaut Candidate Training Program in January 2020, allowing her to be eligible for spaceflight.
She has at least a dozen awards, including four Air Medals, a Meritorious Service Medal, and two Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medals.
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