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Former Navy soccer star named part of astronaut team for manned space flights

A former Naval Academy soccer star who led her squad to an undefeated league season has been named to another team that goes above and beyond.

NASA announced Friday that it had assigned Marine Corps Lt. Col. Nicole Mann to a new crew of astronauts who will fly a privately developed spaceship, marking a return of U.S. manned space flight after the shuttle program ended in 2011. Since then Americans have relied on Russian spacecraft for space travel.

Mann will be a part of a three-person crew to fly Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft on a mid-2019 mission, the spacecraft’s first manned flight.