Col. Nick Hague is the first Space Force Guardian to be launched into space. He touched back down on Earth in March following 170 days in space.
His most recent trip, where he served as the NASA SpaceX Crew 9 commander, was unique, because he and a Russian cosmonaut offered transport home to Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, who had an extended stay on the International Space Station due to technical problems.
"We changed our crew complement to empty up two seats," said Col Hague. "With the objective of launching at the end of September to go up and integrate Butch and Sunny into my crew, and then conduct what was our originally planned six-month mission to the station which is a normal rotational mission, and then come home."
While aboard the ISS, he and the rest of the crew conducted research on how to live sustainably in space.
"I get the privilege of being the hands and the eyes of the research teams on the ground that can't be there," said Col. Hague. "It's everything from growing food, growing lettuce, trying to figure out how do we grow the crops that are going to sustain us when we start going deeper into space? How do I take seeds as opposed to packaged food to Mars to sustain myself?"
Col. Hague says that this is something, as an aerospace engineer, he wouldn't normally get to participate in on Earth.
He has been to space four times, and says that the main difference between some of his earlier trips and this most recent one is that space is becoming more cluttered with things like satellites.
"There's a lot of stuff in space, and you can see it," said Col. Hague. "That's why I'm here at Vandenberg, is to be able to spend time with Guardians and Airmen that are a part of the team at Vandenberg that are the ones tracking all that stuff, and you might not realize they track it, but then they also look at the space station and they say, 'Is the space station safe?' And if something is going to come close to the station, they're calling Houston mission control and letting us know."
Col. Hague became a Space Force Guardian in 2021 and says the role is continuing to grow and adapt to the needs of the country.
"Guardians protect the American way of life," said Col. Hague. "They protect our military, they protect the ultimate high ground. Historically, the high ground is a strategic advantage, and the guardians make sure that we have that advantage as a nation."
