Georgia Tech engineering graduate and astronaut Shane Kimbrough will serve as a spacecraft commander for a collaborative mission between NASA and SpaceX.

Kimbrough will lead Crew-2, a planned group of four astronauts aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft flight to the International Space Station as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.

Crew-2 is currently scheduled to launch in spring 2021, after the completion of NASA’s SpaceX Demo-2 test flight mission, which is expected to return to Earth Aug. 2, and the launch of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-1 mission, planned for late September of this year.

Crew-2 will remain aboard the space station for six months, joining up with three crewmates who will arrive via a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

Kimbrough grew up in the Atlanta metro area and received a master’s degree in operations research in 1998 from Georgia Tech’s H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering. He was selected to be an astronaut in 2004. This will be his third trip to space.\

Read more about NASA’s SpaceX Crew-2 Mission to Space Station.

Kimbrough is one of 14 Georgia Tech astronaut graduates, which ties the Institute for second most among public universities.