[#] NASA Introduces 10 New Astronaut Candidates
robot(spnet, 1) — All
2025-09-23 20:22:02


NASA has unveiled 10 new astronaut candidates drawn from over 8,000 applicants. The diverse group includes four men and six women -- pilots, scientists, and medical professionals -- who will train for future missions to the ISS, the moon, and eventually Mars. CBS News reports: This is NASA's first astronaut class with more women than men. It includes six pilots with experience in high-performance aircraft, a biomedical engineer, an anesthesiologist, a geologist and a former SpaceX launch director. Among the new astronaut candidates is 39-year-old Anna Menon, a mother of two who flew to orbit in 2024 aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon as a private astronaut on a commercial, non-NASA flight. [...]

The other members of the 2025 astronaut class are:
- Army Chief Warrant Officer 3 Ben Bailey, 38, a graduate of the Naval Test Pilot School with more than 2,000 hours flying more than 30 different aircraft, including recent work with UH-60 Black Hawk and CH-47F Chinook helicopters.
- Lauren Edgar, 40, who holds a Ph.D. in geology from the California Institute of Technology, with experience supporting NASA's Mars exploration rovers and, more recently, serving as a deputy principal investigator with NASA's Artemis 3 moon landing mission.
- Air Force Maj. Adam Fuhrmann, 35, an Air Force Test Pilot School graduate with more than 2,100 hours flying F-16 and F-35 jets. He holds a master's degree in flight test engineering.
- Air Force Maj. Cameron Jones, 35, another graduate of Air Force Test Pilot School as well as the Air Force Weapons School with more than 1,600 hours flying high-performance aircraft, spending most of his time flying the F-22 Raptor.
- Yuri Kubo, 40, a former SpaceX launch director with a master's in electrical and computer engineering who also competed in ultimate frisbee contests.
- Rebecca Lawler, 38, a former Navy P-3 Orion pilot and experimental test pilot with more than 2,800 hours of flight time, including stints flying a NOAA hurricane hunter aircraft. She was a Naval Academy graduate and was a test pilot for United Airlines at the time of her selection.
- Imelda Muller, 34, a former undersea medical officer for the Navy with a medical degree from the University of Vermont's Robert Larner College of Medicine; she was completing her residency in anesthesia at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore at the time of her astronaut selection.
- Navy Lt. Cmdr. Erin Overcash, 34, a Naval Test Pilot School graduate and an experienced F/A-18 and F/A-18F Super Hornet pilot with 249 aircraft carrier landings. She also trained with the USA Rugby Women's National Team.
- Katherine Spies, 43, a former Marine Corps AH-1 attack helicopter pilot and a graduate of the Naval Test Pilot School with more than 2,000 hours flying time. She was director of flight test engineering for Gulfstream Aerospace Corp. at the time of her astronaut selection.

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