Metuchen, NJ astronaut's mission now scheduled for August 2017

Mark Vande Hei, with his now-old E.51 patch.

Metuchen’s astronaut is still on track for a spaceflight – it’s just going to be a few months later than planned.

Mark Vande Hei, who was originally assigned as a flight engineer to the Expedition 51/52 crews with a planned March 2017 launch, now will visit the International Space Station as a part of the Expedition 53/54 crews, with a planned August 2017 launch.

Russia, as part of a cost-saving move, is reducing its presence from three crewmembers down to two. The ISS normally has a crew complement of six, the other three people comprised of two American astronauts and one from the other station partners – Canada, Japan, or one of the European Space Agency countries.

The Russian reduction in crew is to begin in March 2017  – Vande Hei’s original planned launch date – and so the previously announced crews have to be reshuffled to accommodate this change.

Previously designed crew patches with Vande Hei’s name, such as the Expedition 51 and 52 emblems, have to also be redesigned. The new Expedition 53 patch was unveiled late last week.
The Russian Soyuz spacecraft, which can carry three people, may not have a vacant third seat. Igor Komarov, head of Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, said the seat can be purchased by NASA or ESA to fly one of their astronauts.

Recently retired last month as a  colonel in the U.S. Army, Vande Hei was born in 1966 in Falls Church, Virginia. He attended St. Joseph High School in Metuchen before moving to Minnesota and graduating from Benilde-Saint Margaret’s High School in Saint Louis Park.

“I haven’t been back to New Jersey for a long time, too long. I started school there and stayed until my family moved to Minnesota when I was 15,” Vande Hei wrote me.