WUNRN
NASA NAMES 50% WOMEN IN NEW
ASTRONAUT GROUP
By Wenqian Zhu @CNNMoney
June 17, 2013:
Meet NASA's newest astronaut trainees. Top row: Josh A.
Cassada, Victor J. Glover, Tyler N. Hague, Christina M. Hammock. Bottom row:
Nicole Aunapu Mann, Anne C. McClain, Jessica U. Meir, Andrew R. Morgan.
NASA has selected
another generation of astronauts to travel to new destinations in the solar
system, including an asteroid and Mars, and for the first time in its history
half of the new candidates are women.
Four out of the eight candidates are women, "making this
the highest percentage of female astronaut candidates ever selected for a
class," the
The new space explorers, drawn from among 6,000 applicants, are
all in their 30s, according to NASA. New astronauts will begin with a two-year
general orientation training and a flight mission to low-Earth orbit
afterwards.
"We have great female candidates in the pool this year. The
selection is about qualifications. It has nothing to do with their
genders," said Jay Bolden, public affairs officer at NASA.
Coming from combined backgrounds, the new astronauts will become
full-time NASA employees. Some astronauts with military affiliations will
retain their military status, and those who are not will quit their jobs,
Bolden said.
NASA, which has recently stopped sending its own rockets into space, will instead outsource that work to
privately held
SpaceX, run by Elon Musk, the outspoken CEO of electric carmaker
Tesla (TSLA) and chairman of solar panel outfitter SolarCity (SCTY), will provide the spacecraft for several flight missions,
according to NASA. Potential missions include a low-Earth orbit flight, planned
soon, a flight to the International Space Station planned around 2020 to 2025,
a mission to land on an asteroid and then the first human mission to Mars in
the 2030s.
NASA has already been in a partnership with SpaceX for several
years. The company is already flying cargo missions to the International Space Station
for NASA, and delivering satellites into space for commercial customers.
"The astronauts could be the first to fly to the International Space Station with a commercial flight,"
Bolden said.
The new astronaut candidates will begin training at NASA's
"These new space explorers asked to join NASA because they
know we're doing big, bold things here—developing missions to go farther into
space than ever before," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in a
statement.
"They are excited about the science we are doing on the
International Space Station and our plan to launch from