(NewsNation) — Former CIA officer Jeanette Epps will finally launch into space in early 2024 after being selected as an astronaut in 2009.
Epps, 52, will be the second Black woman to fly a long-duration mission on the International Space Station (ISS) following the mission of Jessica Watkins in 2022, according to Space.com.
NASA previously pulled Epps from an International Space Station crew that launched in 2018 with little explanation. She is the only member of NASA’s astronaut class of 2009 that has not yet flown in space.
After being pulled off the Soyuz mission in 2018, Epps was disappointed but did not publicly speculate on the reason for NASA’s decision.
“It is something that I live with every day,” Epps said in 2018, according to tech publication Ars Technica. “I didn’t have any medical conditions or anything like that and I didn’t have any family issues at all, either.”
Before being selected to be an astronaut, the Syracuse native spent seven years as a technical intelligence officer with the CIA, a local news outlet reported.
On Thursday, NASA and Axiom Space announced the mission order for what will be the fourth private astronaut mission to the ISS, set to launch in February 2024 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The Crew-8 astronauts set to launch on a SpaceX craft will include Epps, mission specialist Matthew Dominick, commander Michael Barratt, and pilot and mission specialist Alexander Grebenkin, NASA announced.
The expedition is expected to last around six months in orbit.