NASA astronaut Nick Hague is in the unusual position of having to prepare a second time for his first spaceflight.
He and two fellow crewmembers will climb aboard a Soyuz rocket in Kazakhstan tomorrow (March 14) and blast off for a six-month stay at the International Space Station, his first visit to the orbiting laboratory. But he's already been a rookie astronaut once before, in October, when the rocket carrying him and Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin experienced a booster separation failure and the launch was aborted.
"I went right back into training," Hague told Space.com in an interview last month. "There were things that were going to be different because of the change in timing for me being on orbit, so all of those changes, all of those deltas to the plan, were things that I needed to get trained on."
NASA astronaut Nick Hague is in the unusual position of having to prepare a second time for his first spaceflight.
He and two fellow crewmembers will climb aboard a Soyuz rocket in Kazakhstan tomorrow (March 14) and blast off for a six-month stay at the International Space Station, his first visit to the orbiting laboratory. But he's already been a rookie astronaut once before, in October, when the rocket carrying him and Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin experienced a booster separation failure and the launch was aborted.
"I went right back into training," Hague told Space.com in an interview last month. "There were things that were going to be different because of the change in timing for me being on orbit, so all of those changes, all of those deltas to the plan, were things that I needed to get trained on."
For Hague, the months between launch failure and tomorrow's flight have been filled with family time as well as technical details. "There's also been adequate time to really process everything that happened with the family, and that's been important," Hague said. "Being able as a family to process what happened and getting ready to go for this next launch, it's been important to have that time to be able to talk about it."
Ever since his October launch aborted, Hague has been vehement that he is ready to fly again and that his family supports him in that. He met his wife, Catie Hague, when both worked for the Air Force, he as a test pilot and she in the public affairs office, and where she first experienced hearing that something wasn't going quite according to plan during his flights.
"[She and their two sons] are nervous leading up this launch, but I think every family member of anybody that's riding a rocket is nervous," Hague said. "But they're excited, and they continue to be excited, because they understand why we're doing what we're doing. It's important; it's a mission of discovery."
- Soyuz Space Crew Launch Failure 2018: Full Coverage
- In Photos: Space Station Crew's Harrowing Abort Landing After Soyuz Launch Failure
- Here's What the Failed Soyuz Rocket Launch Looked Like to an Astronaut in Space
Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her @meghanbartels. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
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