USSF Guardian and NASA Astronaut Col Nick Hague connects with SSC acquirers

Published June 23, 2025
By By Lisa Sodders, SSC Public Affairs

El Segundo, CA -- U.S. Space Force Col. Nick Hague, the first Guardian to launch into space, engaged with the Space Systems Command (SSC) workforce on life aboard the International Space Station, career development as a military member in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) program, and how the complementary intersection between the USSF and NASA in a visit to Los Angeles Air Force Base on June 16, 2025.

Hague is an Astronaut with NASA and is the first USSF Guardian to launch into space, most recently as a commander and pilot of the NASA SpaceX Crew-9 on a Dragon capsule. The mission to the International Space Station launched on Sept. 28, 2024, and returned on Mar. 18, 2025, spending 171 days in Low Earth Orbit.

As part of SSC’s Guardians Everywhere speaker series, Hague shared his experiences, the intricacies of life on the ISS, and addressed questions from in-person and online participants regarding his time as a service member with NASA. Later, he participated in a session with more than a dozen members of the SSC interns’ program, which allowed for more in-depth mentorship with the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) cohort of the command’s workforce.

Hague and fellow American crew members conducted more than 150 unique experiments and logged over 900 hours of research aboard the orbiting laboratory.

“Everything floats in space; and when you take away gravity, you get to study these nuanced behaviors, and those really drive the discovery process that helps us understand ourselves and the universe and how we interact with it,” Hague said, noting that one experiment involved processing a sample of his own blood to examine how zero gravity affected his immune system.

Hague also spoke about the complex and coordinated effort it takes from personnel on ground and in orbit for Astronauts to safely conduct maintenance on the ISS while exposed to the vacuum of space, having completed a six-hour spacewalk during his most recent mission.

“There’s a lot of focus in spacewalks on the people wearing the suits outside,” Hague said. “What you don’t see are the hundreds of people on the ground in mission control that are looking at your every move and feeding you the information you need just in time so that you can execute as flawlessly as possible.”

Hague has now logged 374 days in space and 25 hours and 56 minutes of time in four spacewalks. He also accumulated, as both a flight test engineer and astronaut, more than 10,000 hours in more than 35 aircraft, including 267 combat hours. He recently was nominated for promotion to the rank of brigadier general.

An International Legacy of Science

Hague said it was “humbling” to be the first Guardian to launch into space. One of the most memorable parts of his time on the ISS was work with an international crew; English and Russian are the two official languages on the station, and everyone who goes to the ISS must be fluent in both languages.

“You get to float around the table and share what’s going on in each other’s lives,” Hague said. “I voted in space and we were celebrating milestones – here’s Thanksgiving, celebrating Christmas – and even though you come from very different parts of the world, you start to realize that there’s so much in common that we share, and the differences that we bring to the table actually make our team stronger and they become the things you celebrate.”

“The other thing that really changes you is just being able to look down on the Earth,” Hague said. “It’s hard to put into words and to describe how the earth looks from orbit. The sheer magnitude challenges you: being able to look a thousand miles this way and a thousand miles that way and just take it all in and have it look so big on the display right in front of you – and at the same time, against the backdrop of the universe and how many stars you see in the night sky, it seems so small and so precious.”

One major change between his first mission to the ISS in 2019 and his most recent mission was a dramatic increase in the number of satellites in LEO, Hague said, describing them as looking like swarms of fireflies, hundreds of them, “and some of them looked really close and I thought of Guardians around the globe, keeping me safe.”

Space debris is harder to see but still leaves its mark on the ISS, Hague said.

“It’s the little things that are maybe the size of a grain of sand, that drill themselves into an aluminum railing that you’re going to grab onto with a rubber glove, and the aluminum’s got all these sharp edges so you can’t grab it because you’ll tear your glove, your suit will leak and then you’ll have to abort the EVA (Extravehicular activity,)” Hague said.

“So imagine: six hours out there, you’re looking at every place you grab, making sure you don’t grab something you’re not supposed to,” Hague said. “Those impacts are all over the outside of the space station.”

The planned decommissioning of the ISS in 2030 saddens Hague and he hopes something new will replace the space station.

“That is a tremendous legacy when you think about what we were able to accomplish,” Hague said. “It’s more than any one country could accomplish on its own. We had to work together as an international community.”

During his time training with fellow astronauts in Japan, Germany, Russia and Canada, Hague said he discovered, “their commitment and dedication and sacrifices is no greater or deeper than anything I see in Houston; it’s the same. People are devoting their lives to making this happen, and it’s for this mission that we can only do together: let’s go do science experiments so we can benefit humanity.”

The USSF-NASA Partnership

About 40 percent to 50 percent of the astronaut corps has military experience – either active duty or retired military, Hague said. While NASA handles the civil space mission and USSF is military and focuses on national security, both are necessary and important.

“The civil space mission, the commercial space mission, those sectors don’t exist if we don’t have security in space,” Hague said. “And that’s why the national security mission in space is so important because it provides that foundational stability in the domain that allows NASA to go on and do its great things.”

“And we leverage those capabilities,” Hague added. “I need Guardians and Airmen to do their jobs to make sure I can launch into space, that I can navigate while I’m in space, that I can stay safe and move the station out of the way of debris in space and then ultimately, help me get back down to the ground safely. So NASA can’t do its mission without Space Force Guardians around the globe doing their mission.”

Life in Zero Gravity

Splashdown on Earth doesn’t really end the mission, Hague said, noting that it took about two months for him to feel “normal” again. On his first mission to the ISS, it took a couple of days for his body to adjust to a zero-gravity environment but on the second, he adjusted within hours.

Because he was floating in zero gravity, he didn’t develop calluses on the bottom of his feet, but on the top, from hooking his feet under railings on the ISS. He also had to lift weights and do cardiovascular exercise for 2.5 hours every day, to keep his muscles from atrophying and his bone mass from shrinking.

“The human body is so adaptable to the environment that’s around it,” Hague said. “Whether you realize it or not, you’re adapting to the environment that you push yourself into every day. So the little micro-decisions about how you’re taking care of yourself accumulate every day. And if you put yourself in the right situations, your body will adapt and stay healthy. At 50 years old, my body is not set in its ways; it can still adapt to everything that I subjected it to.”

Soft Skills and STEM

Hague, who has a Bachelor of Science in aeronautical engineering from the U.S. Air Force Academy and a Master’s degree in aeronautical and astronautical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said he considered himself an introvert, but over the years, he figured out how to put himself in situations that challenged him or made him uncomfortable, so he could develop new skills. The USSF is the newest and smallest service, he noted, and “soft skills” including small team dynamics are important to cultivate.

“Work on how you manage yourself, how you take care of your teammates, how you’re looking out for each other,” Hague said. “All of those ‘soft skills’ are really hard to come by. When we select astronauts, that’s the thing we’re looking for. And then, once we select people that we really think have it, we spend a lot of time continuing to train because they’re that important.”

Hague noted that he applied three times to NASA to become an astronaut over a 10-year period, and said it was more important for people to follow their passions and choose things that challenge them, rather than try to tailor their career in the hopes of being selected as an astronaut. NASA selects cohorts more than individuals, and if you don’t get chosen, at least you’ll have a career you enjoyed and can be proud of.

“At the end of the day, eight (astronauts) out of 6,000 (applicants) are pretty low odds, and you don’t want to spend 15 years and five applications and not get selected and then say, ‘Well, for the last 15 years I did a bunch of things I didn’t want to do to try and get this,’ and then you have a bunch of regret,” Hague said. “Find what you’re passionate about. Go do it and then apply, apply, apply.”

According to Hague, applicants need a technical STEM degree and a master’s level education, noting that the same skillsets that Guardians demonstrate and display in units across the USSF are the same skills that NASA cultivates in its operational teams—painting a perspective of the parallels and intersections between the service and agency.

“The thing I want you to walk away with at the end of the day is that what you do makes it possible for NASA to explore space, makes it possible for us to have a human space flight program,” Hague told the SSC audience. “You are connected in a way that you may not fully appreciate – you make it possible for us to do those really big, awesome things that NASA has done and plans to do.”

“Guardians guard the American way of life,” Hague said. “Guardians guard our advantage in space. It’s the ultimate high ground – the high ground has been a strategic military value since the beginning of time. And we make sure that our military still has that advantage.”

That definition can seem nebulous and there are so few Guardians compared to other service members; Hague says he’s frequently told, “You’re the first person in the Space Force that I’ve met.”

“Be a loud voice and let people know who you are, and what you do, and why it’s important,” Hague said.