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NASA said Thursday that rookie astronaut Serena Auñón-Chancellor will replace Jeanette Epps on an expedition set for launch to the International Space Station in June.
The space agency did not disclose a reason for the crew change, and a NASA spokesperson offered no details on the decision.
"A number of factors are considered when making flight assignments," the spokesperson said. "These decisions are personnel matters for which NASA doesn't provide information."
The space agency announced Epps' assignment to the Expedition 56 and 57 crews in January 2017. The Syracuse, New York, native would have become the first African American astronaut to live and work aboard the station on a long-duration mission, and the fourth African American woman to fly in space.
[...] Epps was a member of the backup crew for the most recent launch of residents to the space station in December. She traveled to the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in case a last-minute replacement was needed.
She will return to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, the home base for the agency's astronaut corps, to be considered for an assignment to a future mission, officials said in a statement.
Source: https://spaceflightnow.com/2018/01/19/astronaut-jeanette-epps-bumped-from-space-station-flight/
Also at The Verge and ArsTechnica.
Updates:
- Brother of NASA Astronaut Blames Racism For Her Removal From ISS Mission
- Former NASA head: Astronauts like Jeanette Epps 'almost always' still go to space
- Jeanette Epps isn't the only astronaut to be bumped from a NASA mission
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday January 22 2018, @03:37PM (1 child)
Exactly. You wouldn't make a biopic on MLK Jr. and cast a white guy as Dr. King, nor would you cast a man as Wonder Woman, or a woman as Thor.
Sometimes you can get creative, though, like when the did a remake of Battlestar Galactica and made Starbuck a girl. That was fine, and actually worked well, because the whole thing was a total remake, and only had vague parallels to the original (and campy) 70s show, with the main characters really very different. However, you can also go too far with this, as we saw with the Ghostbusters remake where they used 4 women, where it obviously was pushing an agenda and didn't make for a better story.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 23 2018, @12:53AM
Yes, I would; I'm a troll.