DENVER — A Colorado woman is set to go to space next week as part of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-10.
Nichole Ayers, who grew up in the Colorado Springs area and went to Woodland Park High School, would join three other astronauts in the launch bound for the International Space Station on March 12. The launch is scheduled for 5:48 p.m. MT.
It’s set to be the 11th human spaceflight as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew program, which aims to facilitate “safe, reliable, and cost- effective human transportation on International Space Station missions from the United States through a partnership with American private industry.”
Joining Ayers on SpaceX Crew-10 would be fellow NASA astronaut Anne McClain, Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Russian cosmonaut Kirill Peskov. They’re scheduled to lift off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
NASA said the mission will station the astronauts on the ISS for about four months.
Ayers was selected from a pool of thousands to be an astronaut candidate back in 2021. She officially became an astronaut one year ago this week.
“I’m excited to follow and help contribute to the NASA mission, and science on the [International] Space Station potentially,” she told Denver7 upon becoming eligible for space missions in 2024. “And learning how to live long term in space so we can get to the moon then get to Mars, and figure out how this long term spaceflight really works once we get to Mars.”
- We spoke to Ayers as part of our Denver7+ Women’s History Month special last year. Watch those stories of more trailblazing Colorado women of the past and present, in the video player below.
Ayers is a 2011 graduate of the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. She is “one of few” women to fly an F-22 Raptor, NASA says, and in 2019 led the first ever all-woman formation of the aircraft in combat.
The City of Woodland Park celebrated Ayers with a social media post Wednesday, a week before the scheduled launch.