After being pulled from a spaceflight in January, Jeanette Epps speaks up

Enlarge / Jeanette Epps, left, is shown as an Expedition 54-55 backup crewmember on December 5, 2017. She was pulled from Expedition 56 at about this time. (credit: NASA)

NASA astronaut Jeanette Epps was supposed to be in space right now, as the first African-American crew member living on the International Space Station. But instead she's on the ground doing all of the things astronauts do when they're not in space-training, monitoring programs, working as a capcom in Mission Control, and more.

Since being pulled from her flight in January, a mission that launched about two weeks ago for a six-month tour on the space station, Epps has remained quiet in public. NASA did not specify the reasons for her removal from Expedition 56 to the space station, saying only that, "These decisions are personnel matters for which NASA doesn't provide information."

However, Epps did finally speak publicly this week, appearing at the Tech Open Air technology festival in Berlin on June 21, where she was interviewed by journalist Megan Gannon. The website CollectSPACE provided a transcript of the discussion.

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