spacetoday.net: Astronaut added to commercial crew mission

Posted: Fri, May 21, 2021, 4:52 PM ET (2052 GMT)
NASA added an astronaut to a commercial crew mission launching this fall. NASA said Monday that Kayla Barron will be part of the Crew-3 mission launching to the International Space Station as soon as Oct. 23 on a Crew Dragon spacecraft. NASA astronauts Raja Chari and Tom Marshburn and ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer had previously been assigned to Crew-3, but NASA held the fourth seat open in the event it was able to work out a seat barter agreement with Roscosmos and thus fly a Russian cosmonaut on that mission. NASA officials acknowledged last month it was unlikely that agreement could be completed in time to assign a cosmonaut to Crew-3.