HOUSTON: NASA announced Monday its 10 latest trainee astronauts, who include a firefighter turned Harvard professor, a former member of the national cycle team, and a pilot who led the first-ever all-woman F-22 formation in combat.
The 2021 class was whittled down from a field of more than 12,000 applicants and will now report for duty in January at the Johnson Space Center in Texas, where they will undergo two years of training.
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“We’re going back to the Moon, and we’re continuing on to Mars — and so today we welcome 10 new explorers,” NASA administrator Bill Nelson said at an event to welcome the recruits.
“Alone, each candidate has ‘the right stuff,’ but together they represent the creed of our country: E pluribus unum – out of many, one,” he added.
The 10 candidates, who range in age from 32 to 45, will learn how to operate and maintain the International Space Station, train for spacewalks, develop robotics skills, safely operate a T-38 training jet, and learn Russian to communicate with their counterparts.
After they graduate, they could be assigned to missions aboard the ISS or deeper into space, including NASA’s planned return to the Moon later this decade under the Artemis mission, which will include the first woman and person of color to set foot on lunar soil.
