At the time, she also expressed concern that some of her training - the training tailored to the Russian Soyuz vehicle that NASA astronauts have relied on since the space shuttle's retirement in 2011 - would go to waste. Shortly after the flight launched without her, Epps said publicly that she wasn't aware of the reason for the reassignment and that she wasn't experiencing any health or family issues that would interfere with flight. (She will likely now lose that title to Victor Glover, who will fly on SpaceX's first operational Crew Dragon mission, called Crew-1, currently scheduled to launch Oct. The agency declined to offer a reason for the decision, which drew controversy at the time in part because Epps was on track to become the first Black astronaut to fly a full-fledged, six-month space station expedition rather than a short-duration mission. (Image credit: Andrey Shelepin/Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center) Jeanette Epps is pictured with her wouldbe crewmembers Russian cosmonaut Sergey Prokopyev and European astronaut Alexander Gerst in Kazakhstan in December 2017, the month before she was taken off the mission launching in June 2018 and replaced by NASA colleague Serena Auñón-Chancellor.
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