NASA unveils elite group of astronauts Trump associate socialized with alleged Russian agent in final weeks of 2016 campaign
Houston — NASA on Friday announced the crews of the first flights from U.S. soil since the space shuttle retired in 2011, an elite group of astronauts that the agency hopes will help open a new era of space travel.
The crews would fly on spacecraft developed not by NASA but by two corporations, SpaceX and Boeing, which are under contract to provide a taxi-like service to the International Space Station.
On the first human test flight of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, NASA selected astronauts Eric Boe and Nicole Mann to join Boeing executive Chris Ferguson. NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley would fly on the first human test flight of SpaceX’s Dragon capsule.
On the first operational mission to the International Space Station, Sunita Williams and Josh Cassada would fly for Boeing. NASA astronauts Victor Glover and Michael Hopkins would fly Dragon’s first operational mission to the space station.
“It’s absolutely an opportunity of a lifetime,” said Mann, who was selected as an astronaut in 2013.
“The first flight is something you dream about as a test pilot,” said Hurley, who flew on the last shuttle mission. He then added that it looked like the launch date was finally approaching, and that the mission would actually happen.
In 2014, Boeing and SpaceX were awarded a combined $6.8 billion in contracts from NASA to develop spacecraft capable of flying crews to the station, the orbiting laboratory.
Leading up to the ceremony at the Johnson Space Center here, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said it was a historic moment for the agency: “We are going to launch American astronauts from American soil. That’s a big deal.”
Both Boeing and SpaceX have faced setbacks and delays — with the latest schedule slips being announced on Thursday. While both companies had recently said they would conduct their first test flights with astronauts on board by the end of this year, those flights are now scheduled for 2019.
Gwynne Shotwell, the president of SpaceX told the crews on Friday: “What a sacred honor this was to be part of this program and to fly you. Thank you. We take it very seriously. We won’t let you down.”
Maria Butina, the Russian gun rights activist who was charged last month with working as an unregistered agent of the Kremlin, socialized in the weeks before the 2016 election with a former Trump campaign aide who anticipated joining the presidential transition team, emails show, putting her in closer contact with President Donald Trump’s orbit than was previously known.
Butina sought out interactions with J.D. Gordon, who served for six months as the Trump campaign’s director of national security before leaving in August 2016 and being offered a role in the nascent Trump transition effort, according to documents and testimony provided to the Senate Intelligence Committee and described to The Washington Post.
The two exchanged several emails in September and October 2016, culminating in an invitation from Gordon to attend a concert by the rock band Styx in Washington. Gordon also invited Butina to attend his birthday party in late October of that year.
Prosecutors have said Butina, 29, who became a graduate student at American University in 2016, attempted to infiltrate the U.S. political system at the direction of a senior Russian official. Her activities came at the same time that, according to U.S. intelligence officials, Moscow was seeking to interfere in the presidential election to help Trump.
During the campaign, Butina asked Trump at a public event in 2015 about his views on Russia and briefly met Donald Trump Jr. at a National Rifle Association meeting in May 2016.
U.S. investigators probing alleged coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia have been examining dozens of contacts between Russians and Trump associates, including Trump Jr., former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner, as well as foreign policy advisers Carter Page and George Papadopoulos.
Gordon, 50, a former naval officer who served as a Pentagon spokesman under President George W. Bush before working on several Republican political campaigns, said his contacts with Butina were innocuous.
“From everything I’ve read since her arrest last month, it seems the Maria Butina saga is basically a sensationalized click bait story meant to smear a steady stream of Republicans and NRA members she reportedly encountered over the past few years,” he said in a statement to The Post, noting that she networked extensively. Gordon provided the same statement and some details of his interactions to the Washington Times, which published his account Friday afternoon after The Washington Post contacted Gordon for comment.
“I wonder which prominent Republican political figures she hasn’t come across?” Gordon asked.