NASA Hosts Astronaut Frank Rubio’s Prelaunch News Briefing, Interviews

By U.S. Army Public AffairsAugust 19, 2022

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WASHINGTON - Lt. Col. Frank Rubio, U.S. Army NASA astronaut, is scheduled to conduct a media engagement, including limited interviews, at 9 a.m. on Aug. 24, which will be simulcast on NASA television and YouTube from the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Russia.

Lt. Col. Rubio is scheduled to launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, to the International Space Station on Sept. 21.

Media wishing to participate in the news conference or interviews must contact NASA’s Johnson Space Center newsroom at 281-483-5111 or jsccommu@mail.nasa.gov by 5 p.m. Friday, Aug. 19. Those wishing to submit a question on social media for the prelaunch news conference may do so using #AskNASA.

Rubio, along with Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin, is scheduled to launch to the space station Wednesday, Sept. 21, aboard the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. He will be a flight engineer and member of the Expedition 68 station crew.

This will be Rubio’s first spaceflight since becoming an astronaut in 2017. The Miami, Florida, native graduated from the U.S. Military Academy and earned a doctor of medicine degree from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland. Prior to attending medical school, he served as a UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter pilot and flew more than 1,100 hours, including more than 600 hours of combat and imminent danger time during deployments to Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq. Rubio is a board-certified family physician and flight surgeon.

For more information please contact Joshua Finch, Headquarters, Washington, 202-358-1100, joshua.a.finch@nasa.gov and Megan Dean, Johnson Space Center, Houston, 281-483-5111, megan.dean@nasa.gov.