HOUSTON– One month after being revealed to the world, NASAs 10 brand-new astronaut candidates are reporting to work to start 2 years of training.The four females and 6 guys, who were chosen from a pool of more than 12,000 candidates, are starting their new professions as future area station crew members and possible moonwalkers on Monday (Jan. 10).”We have several human spacecraft, so it has actually never been a more exciting time to embark on your career,” stated NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy, a previous space shuttle bus astronaut. (Image credit: NASA)NASA astronaut candidate (or “ascan”) training falls into 5 major categories: operating and preserving area station systems, spacewalking, robotics abilities, piloting T-38 supersonic jets and Russian language skills.Asked by collectSPACE.com what they were looking forward to most, the new ascans provided replies that were as varied as their backgrounds.”NASAs 2021 astronaut candidate class with Vanessa Wyche (5th from left), director of Johnson Space Center in Houston. He formerly served as a NASA flight cosmetic surgeon for a number of astronaut explorations to the International Space Station and then became SpaceXs very first flight surgeon, helping to release the companys very first people into area during the Demo-2 mission of the Crew Dragon spacecraft.
HOUSTON– One month after being announced to the world, NASAs ten new astronaut prospects are reporting to work to begin two years of training.The four ladies and 6 guys, who were picked from a swimming pool of more than 12,000 candidates, are beginning their new careers as future space station crew members and possible moonwalkers on Monday (Jan. 10). They are NASAs 23rd class of trainees and the 22nd to based at Johnson Space Center in Houston since 1962.”NASAs Johnson Space Center is the house of our countrys human spaceflight program. This previous November, we celebrated our 60th anniversary here in Houston, a remarkable turning point in the history of the U.S. area program,” stated Vanessa Wyche, director of Johnson Space Center, at the Dec. 6 event that revealed the new astronaut candidates. “Our astronaut corps puts the human in human spaceflight.”Related: How To Become An AstronautThose who pass the two years of direction will join NASAs astronaut corps and end up being qualified for International Space Station (ISS) and Artemis moon objective tasks.”We have multiple human spacecraft, so it has never ever been a more interesting time to start your profession,” said NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy, a former space shuttle astronaut. “We are extremely concentrated on constructing a blueprint for how we will check out with human beings, not just to the moon, not simply onto Mars, however finding out the blueprint for how we are going to enter into the solar system.””That is what we are concentrated on today,” Melroy said. “We are going to practice on the moon and were going to push out, and that is going to be your generation.”Related: What Its Like to Become a NASA Astronaut: 10 FactsOpportunities aheadNASAs 2021 astronaut candidate class: Nichole Ayers, Marcos Berríos, Christina Birch, Deniz Burnham, Luke Delaney, Andre Douglas, Jack Hathaway, Anil Menon, Christopher Williams and Jessica Wittner. (Image credit: NASA)NASA astronaut prospect (or “ascan”) training falls into five significant categories: operating and preserving spaceport station systems, spacewalking, robotics abilities, piloting T-38 supersonic jets and Russian language skills.Asked by collectSPACE.com what they were looking forward to most, the brand-new ascans gave replies that were as differed as their backgrounds. “One of the things that drew me to wanting to end up being an astronaut was the truth that you get to do all of these different things and learn how to do everything,” stated Christopher Williams, a medical physicist whose research focused on establishing image guidance methods for cancer treatments.Marcos Berrios, a fight pilot in the U.S. Air National Guard with a doctorate in aeronautics and astronautics, responded.”I truly like to find out about brand-new ideas and new subjects, so even finding out Russian appears really interesting to me. Geology, learning how to fly the T-38– its difficult for me to select one,” Berrios stated. “Going into the swimming pool and practicing spacewalking probably tops the list.”The “swimming pool” is the neutral buoyancy laboratory (NBL), a 6.2 million gallon (23.5 million liter) tank that is big enough to immerse major mockups of the area stations primary modules, along with other spacecraft and payloads as is required. Candidates find out the fundamentals of operating in the NBL while ending up being familiar using an extravehicular mobility system, or spacesuit.Related: How astronauts get ready for the unidentified in space”I like dealing with my hands,” stated Christina Birch, a bioengineer and embellished track cyclist on the U.S. National Team. “I love wrenching on bikes, not just riding them, therefore one of the things I am really anticipating is being in the neutral buoyancy lab. developing spacewalking skills along with my classmates.”Jessica Wittner, a marine pilot and test pilot in the U.S. Navy, was drawn to the new cars that she and her fellow candidates will learn to fly.”We get to discover about all of the ISS systems and were going to eventually get to deal with the brand-new SLS [Area Launch System] and Orion systems and whatever thats coming online. I believe actually simply finding out how everything works, how to keep and run it and successfully get us there and back– anywhere there is– I believe thats what Im most excited about,” she said.Just being able to fly, specifically using NASAs fleet of T-38 training jets, was the most popular reply among the ascans. The jets are utilized to expose astronauts to vibrant, unforgiving situations such as they might come across in area.”Im excited to fly planes. I matured with Top Gun, the film about the Navy pilots and I like things that go quickly,” said Andre Douglas, a naval designer and salvage engineer with the U.S. Coast Guard. “I utilized to dream about flying when I was a kid, so I believe that will be a truly cool ability to have and just an experience to go through.””I have a great deal of love for aviation,” said Deniz Burnham, an engineer and supervisor for energy market drilling tasks around the globe. “I do have my helicopter license and my fixed-wing seaplane license, so Im extremely curious about the T-38.”Jack Hathaway, a commander in the U.S. Navy with more than 2,500 flight hours in 30 kinds of airplane, consisting of more than 500 carrier-arrested landings, stated he likewise anticipated flying the T-38, however for a various reason than a few of his classmates with less flight experience.”One thing that Im extremely delighted about the training is taking people up flying in the T-38,” he stated. “Ive done it only a couple times in my profession, taking someone flying in a tactical jet or quick jet who has actually never ever done it before, but just having the ability to share that love of flight and get up into the sky– its a various world up there.”Nichole Ayers, a major in the U.S. Air Force who led the very first all-woman formation of the F-22 fighter jet in battle, was likewise eagerly anticipating sharing experiences.”I am in fact most thrilled about simply getting together with these incredible humans in my astronaut candidate class,” Ayers stated. “Being part of the group is the biggest thing for me.”Not all brand-new to NASASome of the new candidates are not entirely brand-new to NASA or the astronaut experience. Douglas, for example, just recently dealt with maritime robotics, planetary defense and area exploration objectives for NASA at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab.”NASA is going to be requiring robots in the future to help us [astronauts] with a great deal of the expedition,” he informed collectSPACE. “There are going to be locations where we cant go, there are going to be things that we require to do that we may not wish to put ourselves out there first and we will need extensions of ourselves to be able to see things that we cant see.”NASAs 2021 astronaut prospect class with Vanessa Wyche (5th from left), director of Johnson Space Center in Houston. (Image credit: NASA)Luke Delaney was flying as a research pilot at NASAs Langley Research Center in Virginia when he was selected to become an astronaut.”I only had about a year and a half at Langley, but after transitioning from DOD [Department of Defense, U.S. Marine Corps] over to the federal government side, it was fantastic exposure to how NASA works. Seeing, on a little group level, just how much effort enters and just how much data and science was getting achieved was crazy,” stated Delaney. “Now to transition into the space, I am simply truly excited about that and ready for this group. “For Anil Menon, not only are the technical details of spaceflight not brand-new, however neither is Johnson Space. He formerly functioned as a NASA flight cosmetic surgeon for a variety of astronaut explorations to the International Space Station and after that became SpaceXs very first flight cosmetic surgeon, assisting to launch the companys first humans into space during the Demo-2 objective of the Crew Dragon spacecraft.”The fantastic thing about SpaceX is they anticipate you to be a technical specialist, in addition to your specialty, so I was likewise a flight controller, called a system operator, for the freight Dragon. I needed to discover a lot about Dragon to code treatments,” Menon stated. “What I am going to do here [as an astronaut prospect] is have to learn more about Dragon, however likewise discover all the other business partners vehicles.””I do think we are all on equal footing here because we will be just sharing our various insights across all these various cars as NASA works to move on into Artemis, Mars missions and research study assistance on the spaceport station,” he said.Follow collectSPACE.com on Facebook and on Twitter at @collectSPACE. Copyright 2022 collectSPACE.com. All rights booked.
