NASA astronauts Kayla Barron and Chris Birch will serve as spacecraft commander and pilot, respectively. JAXA astronaut Makoto Suwa and Roscosmos cosmonaut Arutyun Kiviryan will join them as mission specialists.
Crew-14 will be the 14th commercial crew rotation carried out with SpaceX under NASA’s Low Earth Orbit Program. After docking with the station, the crew will join Expeditions 75 and 76.
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The mission will be Barron’s second trip to the space station. She previously flew aboard SpaceX’s Crew-3 mission in 2021, spending 177 days in orbit and completing two spacewalks. She has most recently worked on technologies and operational concepts for NASA’s Artemis program.
Birch, selected as a NASA astronaut in 2021, will make her first spaceflight. She holds degrees in mathematics and biochemistry and molecular biophysics from the University of Arizona and a doctorate in biological engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Before becoming an astronaut candidate, Suwa spent nearly a decade with the World Bank Group. He also worked in Rwanda as a Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteer and later joined the World Meteorological Organization. He holds a doctorate in geosciences from Princeton University and completed astronaut certification training in 2024.
Kiviryan will also make his first trip to the International Space Station. He studied rocket engineering at Baltic State Technical University and was selected for the Gagarin Research and Test Cosmonaut Training Center’s Cosmonaut Corps in 2021. He has served as a test cosmonaut since 2023.
Science for future Moon and Mars missions
During their stay aboard the station, the four crew members will conduct scientific investigations and technology demonstrations aimed at improving understanding of long-duration human spaceflight.
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The research will support preparations for future crewed missions to the Moon and Mars, while also producing findings that could benefit people on Earth.
The Crew-14 announcement comes as the current Crew-13 team prepares for its own launch to the station. NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov arrived at Kennedy Space Center on Saturday, Sept. 26, for final preparations.
Crew-13 is targeting liftoff no earlier than 11:10 a.m. EDT on Thursday, Oct. 1, aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
The International Space Station has been continuously occupied for more than 25 years, serving as a platform for scientific research and technology development in low Earth orbit. NASA uses the station to study the challenges of human spaceflight and prepare for longer missions beyond Earth orbit.
