This past Monday, December 6, NASA announced the selection of ten new astronaut candidates out of over 12,000 applicants. According to NASA, they received applications from all 50 states, D.C, and a few U.S. Territories including Puerto Rico, Guam, the Virgin Islands, and the Northern Mariana Islands.

One major change in the selection process for this year was the requirement for all applicants to have a master’s degree in a STEM field. Another change was because the selection process took place during the ongoing pandemic: NASA used an online assessment tool for the first time.

The ten candidates will begin two years of astronaut training at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, next month.

These astronauts will be among those chosen to take part in the Artemis program’s return to the Moon for a landing, whenever that happens. They could also be assigned to fly on one of the Commercial Crew spacecraft on an expedition to the ISS. There are six men and four women, and most of them have the usual military or test pilot background common of astronauts going back to the first group selected back in 1959.

One, Anil Menon previously worked at NASA as a flight surgeon on the ISS program and then was hired to perform the same role at SpaceX, ensuring their human spaceflight program started on the right foot. He was also a fighter pilot in the U.S. Air Force before becoming a flight surgeon.

Nicole Ayers led the first all-woman combat format of F-22 fighters.

Christina Birch has a Ph.D. in bioengineering and medaled three times in the World Cup as part of the U.S. national track cycling team.

Deniz Burnham also worked at NASA before being selected as an astronaut, interning at NASA’s Ames Research Center.

Andre Douglas also has a Ph.D. in systems engineering. Before being selected as a NASA astronaut, he worked at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory on, among other things, NASA’s DART mission.

Christopher Williams is a board-certified medical physicist with a Ph.D. in physics.

Marcos Berríos, Luke Delaney, Jack Hathaway, and Jessica Wittner all flew for various military services.

Congratulations to this latest class of NASA astronauts. We wish you well in your training and future missions.

More Information

NASA press release