Meet the SpaceX Crew-7 astronauts launching to the ISS on Aug. 25 (Image Credit: Space.com)
Four astronauts from four different countries will be on board the seventh operational mission by SpaceX for NASA, which is scheduled to launch later this month.
Crew-7 is scheduled to launch toward the International Space Station (ISS) no earlier than Aug. 25 using the SpaceX Crew Dragon Endurance spacecraft, atop a Falcon 9 rocket from the same company.
The international crew includes NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli, Andreas Mogensen of the European Space Agency (ESA), Japan’s Satoshi Furukawa and Russian cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov.
You can learn more about each of them below.
Related: SpaceX Crew-7 astronaut plans to snap aurora photos on the ISS
Jasmin Moghbeli (NASA)
Jasmin Moghbeli, Crew-7 commander, is a 40-year-old lieutenant-colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps who joined NASA as an astronaut candidate in 2017. Moghbeli will be the second Iranian-American in space after Anousheh Ansari, the first female space tourist, who flew to the ISS in 2006. Crew-7, and then ensuring ISS Expedition 70/71, will be Moghbeli’s first space mission.
Moghbeli’s biography from NASA states that she was born in Bad Nauheim, Germany, but calls Baldwin, New York her hometown. Moghbeli has a bachelor of science degree in aerospace engineering (with information technology) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, along with a master of science in aerospace engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School.
Moghbeli was a Marine Corps test pilot when she joined NASA, with more than 150 combat missions and 2,000 hours of flight time in 25 aircraft types. After finishing basic training at NASA, Moghbeli focused on supporting the Artemis moon program’s human landing system development prior to being assigned to Crew-7.
Andreas Mogensen (Denmark)
Andreas Mogensen, Crew-7 pilot, is a 47-year-old ESA astronaut who in 2015 became the first person from Denmark to reach space. Mogensen was previously a research fellow at the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom, studying matters such as spacecraft guidance and lunar mission landings, when he was selected as an astronaut candidate in 2009. Crew-7 and ISS Expedition 70/71 will be his second space mission.
Mogensen was born in Copenhagen, his official biography states. He has a masters degree in aeronautical engineering from Imperial College London and a doctoral degree in aerospace engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. His career has included working as a drilling services engineer in the Republic of Congo and in Angola, designing control systems for wind turbines, and working as an attitude and control systems engineer on ESA’s Swarm mission, which studied Earth’s magnetic field.
Mogensen’s first mission in space was a 10-day excursion in 2015, launching and landing aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. His many ground duties have included engineering for an ESA lunar lander mission and serving as European astronaut liaison officer at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. Mogensen also performed underground expedition training for the European CAVES (Cooperative Adventure for Valuing and Exercising) program in 2012 and went underwater during a NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) mission.
Satoshi Furukawa (Japan)
Satoshi Furukawa, Crew-7 mission specialist, is a 59-year-old medical doctor and astronaut with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). He previously flew to the ISS for 165 days in 2011 with Expeditions 28 and 29. Crew-7 and Expedition 70/71 will be his second space mission.
Born in Yokohama, Furukawa received doctor of medicine and doctor of philosophy in medical science degrees from the University of Tokyo. He performed clinical medicine and research into gastrointestinal surgery at the University of Tokyo Hospital and related hospitals before being selected as an astronaut candidate in 1999, according to his official biography.
Furukawa’s decades of ground experience include supporting the development of the Japanese Kibo ISS module and leading JAXA’s space biomedical research group. He also participated in the NEEMO 13 mission at the underwater Aquarius habitat, in 2007.
Konstantin Borisov (Russia)
Konstantin Borisov, Crew-7 mission specialist, worked at Volvo Vostok as an analyst, consultant, project manager and head of department for 13 years before joining Roscosmos as a cosmonaut candidate in 2018. Crew-7 and Expeditions 70/71 is his first spaceflight.
Born in Smolensk, the 39-year-old Borisov holds a bachelor of economics from the Russian Academy of Economics, a masters degree in operations research and systems analysis from the University of Warwick in the U.K., and a master of science from the Moscow Aviation Institute, according to his official Russian-language biography (translated into English by Google).
Borisov was appointed as a full cosmonaut in January 2021. As typical training for a long-duration mission in space takes about two to 2.5 years, about the same length of time since Borisov was qualified as a full cosmonaut, his biography does not state other major ground duties aside from required basic training that all astronauts and cosmonauts undertake upon joining their respective agencies.
