Astronaut could become first Black woman to live on ISS
NASA astronaut Jeanette Epps is set to make history next year when she becomes the first Black woman to live on the International Space Station for months at a time.
If everything goes according to plan, her journey on Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spacecraft – its first with a crew aboard – will come two years after being pulled from a similar mission.
Epps had been scheduled to fly on the Russian Soyuz rocket to the ISS in 2018, but NASA replaced her with astronaut Serena Auñón-Chancellor and did not disclose why. More than a dozen African American astronauts have flown in space and visited the station, but that mission would have made Epps the first Black crew member to live there.
“It felt like a huge amount of responsibility. There have been three African Americans who have visited ISS, but they haven’t done the long-duration mission that I am undertaking,” she told The Cut in 2017 before she was pulled from the mission. “As a steward, I want to do well with this honor. I want to make sure that young people know that this didn’t happen overnight.”
Boeing had conducted an uncrewed flight test of Starliner in December 2019, but after the capsule failed to arrive at the ISS because of software problems, the company and NASA decided to repeat the orbital flight test, now planned for later this year.
If all goes well, Epps and colleagues Sunita Williams and Josh Cassada will embark on a six-month expedition on the ISS sometime in 2021.
This will mark Epps’ first space flight. Before becoming a member of the 2009 astronaut class, Epps worked for the CIA.