Moghbeli also has military experience under her belt, including serving as a Marine Corps test pilot and logging more than 150 combat missions and 2,000 hours of flight time.
This latest rideshare deal, however, loomed large over NASA last year amid rising tensions between the United States and Russia over the ongoing war in Ukraine.
SpaceX’s Crew Dragon and Russia’s Soyuz are currently the only vehicles capable of carrying astronauts to and from the space station, though NASA hopes to introduce another provider in the coming months.
Before being selected for astronaut training by ESA in 2009, he was a research fellow at the Surrey Space Centre in the UK, where he studied navigation and control for spacecraft landing on the moon.
Furukawa said he looks forward to reinhabiting the microgravity environment on the space station and delving into scientific pursuits, including research that could aid the development of new medicine and projects that could help inform how humans can one day explore the moon.
In mid-September, the space station crew will also welcome NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara, along with cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub, who will be launching aboard the Russian Soyuz MS-24 capsule.
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