NASA has named the four astronauts who will fly SpaceX Crew-14, the space station crew rotation after the one set to launch next week, a crew drawn from three space agencies that will not launch before spring 2027.
NASA astronaut Kayla Barron will serve as spacecraft commander, with fellow NASA astronaut Chris Birch as pilot. JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Makoto Suwa and Roscosmos cosmonaut Arutyun Kiviryan will serve as mission specialists. Once they dock at the station, the four will join Expedition 75/76. NASA calls the flight the 14th commercial crew rotation flown with SpaceX under the agency’s Low Earth Orbit Program, and says the crew will carry out scientific investigations and technology demonstrations meant to help prepare humans for future missions to the Moon and Mars while also benefiting people on Earth.
The crew mixes one returning flyer with three astronauts who have never been to space. Barron has already spent time aboard the station: she first launched in 2021 on NASA’s SpaceX Crew-3 mission and logged a total of 177 days in orbit across space station Expeditions 66 and 67, during which she completed two spacewalks and served as lead robotics operator for a third. Birch, Suwa and Kiviryan will each be making their first spaceflight on Crew-14.
Barron was selected as a NASA astronaut in 2017. She holds a bachelor’s degree in systems engineering from the U.S. Naval Academy and a master’s degree in nuclear engineering from the University of Cambridge. A commander in the U.S. Navy, she earned her submarine warfare officer qualification and deployed three times aboard the USS Maine. Most recently, she has supported development of new technologies and operational concepts for NASA’s Artemis program.
Birch was selected as a NASA astronaut in the 2021 class, one of 10 candidates NASA chose that year from a field of more than 12,000 applicants. She graduated from the University of Arizona with degrees in mathematics and in biochemistry and molecular biophysics, then earned a doctorate in biological engineering from MIT. She later taught bioengineering at the University of California, Riverside, and scientific writing and communication at Caltech. Away from the astronaut corps, Birch competed as a decorated track cyclist on the U.S. National Team and was named to the Olympic Long Team for the 2020 Tokyo Games. Within NASA she has served as a capsule communicator, or capcom, supporting station crews and the Artemis II mission, was crew lead for Expedition 72, and served as a crew representative for NASA’s Orion Program.
Suwa’s flight assignment follows an announcement from JAXA in January of this year, when the agency named him to an ISS long-duration crew with a stay expected around 2027. JAXA selected him as an astronaut candidate in 2023; before that he spent nearly a decade with the World Bank Group, having earlier served in Rwanda as a Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteer and then worked at the United Nations World Meteorological Organization. He holds a doctorate in geosciences from Princeton University and completed the training required to become a certified astronaut in 2024.
Kiviryan graduated from the Saint Petersburg Suvorov Military School in 2010 and later studied at the Baltic State Technical University, graduating in 2015 as an engineer specializing in rocket science. He was selected for the Gagarin Research and Test Cosmonaut Training Center’s cosmonaut corps in 2021 and has served as a test cosmonaut since 2023. Crew-14 will be his first trip to the space station.
Crew-14 is the mission that follows next in the station’s commercial crew rotation after Crew-13, which NASA and SpaceX are targeting to launch no earlier than 11:10 a.m. EDT Thursday, Oct. 1, from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, with docking planned for about 8 p.m. that same day. Crew-13 carries NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins, as commander, and Luke Delaney, as pilot, along with CSA astronaut Joshua Kutryk and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov as mission specialists. Crew-13 will join Expedition 75; Crew-14 will join Expedition 75/76.
Beyond the “no earlier than spring 2027” window NASA gave for Crew-14, the agency has not released a specific launch date or said how long the mission will last.