NASA has announced that Kayla Barron will command a mission to the International Space Station.
Gates Cambridge Scholar Kayla Barron [2010] will serve as spacecraft commander of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-14 mission to the International Space Station which will launch no earlier than spring 2027.
The crew of four includes members from three space agencies. Their mission is the 14th commercial crew rotation with SpaceX under NASA’s Low Earth Orbit Programme. NASA says the crew will conduct scientific investigations and technology demonstrations to help prepare humans for future exploration missions to the Moon and Mars and to benefit people on Earth.
This will be Kayla’s second flight to the space station. She was selected as a NASA astronaut in 2017. A former commander in the US Navy, she did her master’s degree in nuclear engineering at the University of Cambridge.
She first launched to the space station in 2021 aboard NASA’s SpaceX Crew-3 mission, spending a total of 177 days in space across space station Expeditions 66/67. She completed two spacewalks and served as lead robotics operator for another. Most recently, Kayla supported the development of new technologies and operational concepts for NASA’s Artemis programme.
