NASA astronaut who gave up seat for Starliner crew takes command of SpaceX Crew-11 flight to ISS

Zena Cardman didn't have to wait too long to get a seat on another spacecraft after being removed from SpaceX's Crew-9 mission last year.

The NASA astronaut is one of the four members of SpaceX's Crew-11 mission to the International Space Station (ISS), agency officials announced on Thursday (March 27).

Cardman will command Crew-11, which could launch as soon as July. Joining her are NASA colleague Mike Fincke, Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui and Oleg Platonov of the Russian space agency Roscosmos. Fincke will serve as Crew-11 pilot, and Yui and Platonov will be mission specialists.

Cardman was originally assigned to SpaceX's Crew-9 mission. But in late August of last year, NASA removed her and fellow agency astronaut Stephanie Wilson from the manifest, leaving two empty seats aboard the Crew-9 Dragon capsule for its Sept. 28 launch.

Those seats were kept open for NASA's Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who arrived at the ISS in June on the first-ever crewed flight of Boeing's Starliner capsule.

Starliner experienced thruster problems and helium leaks on its journey to the orbiting lab, and NASA ultimately decided to bring the spacecraft home uncrewed, which happened in early September. Wilmore and Williams were retasked to a long-duration ISS mission and put on Crew-9 for the trip back to Earth, which ended with a dolphin-attended splashdown on March 18.

NASA has not yet announced a spaceflight reassignment for Wilson.

Related: How the NASA astronauts bumped from SpaceX's Crew-9 watched their ride launch without them

Crew-11 will be the first spaceflight for both Cardman and Platonov, who were selected by their respective space agencies in 2017 and 2018.

Fincke already has three trips to the ISS under his belt, racking up a total of 382 days in space over those missions, which occurred in 2004, 2008 and 2011. Crew-11 is a reassignment for Fincke as well; he was previously put on Starliner-1, the Boeing capsule's first operational, long-duration crewed mission to the ISS for NASA. It's unclear when Crew-1 will fly, however, given the issues Starliner experienced on last year's mission.

Yui served as a flight engineer on ISS Expeditions 44 and 45, staying aboard the station for 142 days from November 2014 through July 2015, according to NASA.