Astronaut Jeanette Epps has been assigned by NASA to NASA’s Boeing Starliner-1 mission. It is the first operational crewed flight of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spacecraft on a mission to the International Space Station. Epps will be a part of the team of the NASA astronauts including Sunita Williams and Josh Cassada for a six-month expedition planned for a launch in 2021 to the orbiting space laboratory. The flight will follow NASA certification.
Epps earned a bachelor’s degree in physics in 1992 from LeMoyne College in her hometown of Syracuse, New York. She achieved her master’s degree in science in 1994 and a doctorate in aerospace engineering in 2000, both from the University of Maryland, College Park. Epps authored several journal and conference articles on her research while earning a doctorate. She was a NASA Graduate Student Researchers Project fellow and has worked in a research laboratory for more than two years after completing graduate school. She also co-authored several patents, before the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) recruited her. Before her selection as a member of the 2009 astronaut class, she had spent seven years as a CIA technical intelligence officer.
With companies developing and operating a new generation of spacecraft and launch systems, which are capable of carrying crews to low-Earth orbit and to the space station, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program and the American aerospace industry are working more closely together. The station has been serving as a critical testbed for NASA to understand and overcome the challenges of long-duration spaceflight for over 20 years now. NASA will concentrate its focus on building spacecraft and rockets for deep-space missions as commercial companies focus on providing human transportation services to and from low-Earth orbit.
