NASA astronaut Nick Hague will serve as the mission’s commander, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov will serve as mission specialist.

Probably a bit disappointing for the original commander (Zena Cardman), but an understandable decision by NASA, given the circumstances.

If the Boe-CFT mission had gone to plan, Crew-9 would have been scheduled to launch in mid August with Zena Cardman commanding. The article reports that she has just announced that her father died in August, perhaps about a week before what would have been the launch date.

Got me wondering how situations like that are handled. And what if a close family member dies just a day or two before launch? Or even less time than that?

On a related matter, I’ve also been wondering at what point the backup crews are ‘stood down’. I don’t think it’s the very last minute. I think there’s a window of time during which any serious issues to do with a member of a primary crew would just result in a scheduled launch not going ahead (as opposed to going ahead on schedule but with a crew member swapped out).