NASA declared on Tuesday the astronauts who will fly on board the SpaceX Crew-2 mission the International Space Station next spring.

Two of the astronauts are American: Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur. Akihiko Hoshide is from Japan’s Aerospace Exploration Agency, and Thomas Pesquet, of France, is from the European Space Agency (ESA).

SpaceX left a mark on the world toward the finish of May when it propelled NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken toward the ISS on the SpaceX Demo-2 test flight mission – the first time astronauts launched from American soil since the finish of the space shuttle program right around 10 years prior.

That SpaceX Crew Dragon flight was the first time a private company, instead of an government, sent astronauts into orbit. They are planned to return to Earth for Sunday.

Behnken, who instructed the Demo-2 mission, wedded to McArthur, who will guide the Crew-2 mission. In the middle of, there is additionally a Crew-1 mission scheduled to launch in late September.

McArthur, who was born in Hawaii yet calls California her home state, has one earlier trip to space added to her belt, as per NASA. She propelled with the space shuttle Atlantis on a mission to the Hubble Space Telescope in 2009.

Kimbrough, a retired Army colonel born in Texas and brought up in Atlanta, will be the mission’s spacecraft commander. It will be his third outing to space and second long term remain on board the space station. He has just logged 189 days in space and has launched on board both the retired space shuttle Endeavor in 2008 and a Russian Soyuz rocket in 2016.

The Crew-2 mission will be the third spaceflight for Hoshide, who was part of the STS-124 mission aboard the Discovery in 2008 and whose latest dispatch incorporated a 124-day remain on board the ISS in 2012.

Pesquet, the most youthful individual from the team at age 42, is additionally the just one never to have partaken on a strategic the now-retired U.S. space shuttle program. Be that as it may, he’s as of now went through 196 days in space.

The Crew-2 astronauts are relied upon to remain on board the space station for around a half year close by three other team individuals who will show up independently on a Russian Soyuz. That makes for a seven-man team, as opposed to the standard six, which NASA said will permit twice as much research to be performed during their remain.