Maine native and NASA astronaut Jessica Meir will serve as commander of the SpaceX Crew-12 mission to the International Space Station.

Meir will be joined by NASA astronaut Jack Hathaway, who will serve as pilot, as well as European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev, according to NASA.

The Crew-12 mission will launch no earlier than Feb. 15 for the long-duration science expedition.

The flight is the 12th crew rotation with SpaceX to the orbiting laboratory. The crew will conduct scientific demonstrations to help prepare humans for future exploration missions to the moon and Mars.

Meir, who grew up in Caribou, has been an astronaut since 2013 and was the first Maine woman to travel to space. Her first mission to the space station started in 2019 and ended 205 days — and 3,280 Earth orbits — later on April 16, 2020.

During her time on the space station, Meir traveled 86.9 million miles and made history when she participated in the first all-female spacewalk with fellow NASA astronaut Christina Koch. During the spacewalk, Meir was outside the space station for 21 hours and 44 minutes.

During her six-month mission to the space station, Meir was joined for a short time by another Mainer, Chris Cassidy, who grew up in York.

Since that mission, Meir has served in various roles at NASA, including assistant to the chief astronaut for commercial crew, deputy for the Flight Integration Division, and assistant to the chief astronaut for the human landing system.

Meir has said in interviews with the Press Herald that her dream of going to space began as a young child in Aroostook County. She said she first started talking about becoming an astronaut at age 5 and wrote in her senior yearbook that her goal was to go for a spacewalk.

After graduating as valedictorian from Caribou High School, Meir studied biology at Brown University. She earned a master’s degree from the International Space University in France and a doctorate in marine biology from Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego.

After her first spacewalk in 2019, Meir reflected on her experience in a call with President Donald Trump in the White House.

“It’s a pretty incredible feeling, I’m sure you can all imagine, and is one I will never forget,” she said.