Karen Nyberg Said McArthur: “It’s comforting to us in a way to have knowledge of the technical challenges that they might be facing, to understand how the teams work when they’re trying to resolve those challenges because it gives you a lot of confidence. Knowing that once I got back I was not going to be able to look out at the Earth anymore, I was not going to be able to fly, to float quickly, grab a handrail and zoom around the corner.“All those little things that are special about being in space, just take advantage of those while you can.”© 1999-2018 Spaceflight Now / Pole Star Publications Ltd Nicole Menner.

He piloted space shuttle missions STS-127 and STS-135, the final flight of the space shuttle program. NASA.gov brings you the latest images, videos and news from America's space agency. I mean, it's a tough job to be the one watching. ""I think the thing I'm most looking forward to is being able to share this experience with my son," he said. Behnken holds a doctorate in mechanical engineering from CalTech and served as an Air Force flight test engineer with the F-22 program. Doug Hurley is one of two astronauts on the Crew Dragon for the historic NASA SpaceX launch. NASA You take the opportunity to support one another when it's the other person's turn. Hurley has logged over 5,500 hours in more than 25 aircraft.Doug Hurley was born on October 21, 1966, in Endicott, New York, United States.Doug Hurley and his wife astronaut Karen Nyberg have one son. McArthur also had a relatively short shuttle mission. As Karen said, it gives you a lot of confidence in the process as they go through this mission.”Hurley and Behnken have been training for the past several years for their Crew Dragon flight, routinely flying from Houston to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, to SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California, and various other job-related destinations.While managing life on the home front is difficult for the spouse who stays behind, the fact that the families are such close friends definitely helps.“We’ve been friends for 20 years,” said McArthur. Based at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Harwood is a devoted amateur astronomer and co-author of "Comm Check: The Final Flight of Shuttle Columbia. He launched into space for the third time as commander of Crew Dragon Demo-2, the first crewed spaceflight from American soil since STS-135. “I don’t want to spoil the movie for folks who haven’t seen it, but the ‘First Man’ movie that recently came out, there’s a scene in there where Neil Armstrong is tasked by his wife with explaining to his children what the risk in front of them actually is.“My son is a little bit on the young side for that explanation, but we’ve had that conversation. And it is the first time in space history that astronauts will ride commercially developed American-made rockets and spacecraft not owned and operated by the space agency.A veteran of two space flights, including a long-duration stay aboard the space station, Nyberg, now retired from the astronaut corps, is married to Crew Dragon commander Douglas Hurley, a two-flight veteran and pilot of the shuttle Atlantis during the program's final flight. He covered 129 space shuttle missions, every interplanetary flight since Voyager 2's flyby of Neptune and scores of commercial and military launches. Before arriving at NASA in 2000, he was in the U.S. Marine Corps, where he served as a fighter pilot and test pilot. "My son is a little bit on the young side for that explanation, but we've had that conversation. Knowing that once I got back I was not going to be able to look out at the Earth anymore, I was not going to be able to fly, to float quickly, grab a handrail and zoom around the corner.