Rookie NASA astronaut Chris Williams will launch to the ISS on a Russian rocket later this year

One of NASA's newest astronauts has just been assigned his first space mission.

Chris Williams, who graduated with NASA's 23rd astronaut class last year, has been selected to fly to the International Space Station (ISS) on the upcoming Russian Soyuz MS-28 launch. Williams will spend about eight months living aboard the orbital laboratory, serving as Expedition 74 flight engineer.

Soyuz MS-28 will launch from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on a Soyuz rocket no earlier than November 2025. Williams will be joined by Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev, of the Russian space agency Roscosmos.

Williams will be the second of his class to launch to the ISS, preceded recently by Nichole Ayers, who launched as pilot aboard SpaceX's Crew-10 mission in March. Another of their class, Andre Douglas, was selected as part of NASA's Artemis 2 backup crew, with a fourth, Anil Menon, currently training for MS-29.

Williams grew up in Potomac, Maryland, according to his NASA biography. He earned a bachelor's degree in physics from Stanford University, followed by a doctorate in the same field from MIT. He completed a Medical Physics Residency training at Harvard Medical School, where he was conducting research as a clinical physicist at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital when he was selected as an astronaut.

The MS-28 crew will rotate in as the MS-27 astronauts are wrapping up their own orbital stay. MS-27 launched from Baikonur on April 8, carrying NASA's Jonny Kim and two cosmonauts to the ISS. They are scheduled to depart sometime after the arrival of MS-28, around the beginning of December.

While in space, Williams and the rest of the ISS crew will continue work on dozens of ongoing microgravity investigations into the effects of spaceflight on the human body, various technology demonstrations, as well as the stewardship of the station's routine maintenance needs.