NASA selects fourth astronaut for Crew-4 mission
NASA astronaut Jessica Watkins is scheduled to fly to space for the first time as part of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-4 mission launching to the International Space Station.
Cape Canaveral, Fla. - NASA makes it four for Crew-4.
The space agency announced astronaut Jessica Watkins will be the fourth person to join the Crew-4 mission, which is the fourth crew rotation flight of the Crew Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station. She will serve as a mission specialist.
This will be Watkins' first trip to space since she was selected as an astronaut in 2017.
She will join NASA astronauts Kjell Lindgren and Robert Hines, as well as European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti for the mission.
Watkins began her career at NASA as an intern and has worked at the agency’s Ames Research Center in California and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. At the time of her astronaut selection, Watkins was a postdoctoral fellow in the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences at the California Institute of Technology, where she collaborated as a member of the Science Team for the Mars Science Laboratory rover, Curiosity.
Crew-4 is scheduled to launch in April 2022 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral for a six-month science mission aboard the ISS.
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