NASA announced its newest class of "astronaut candidates," five women and seven men, chosen from over 18,000 applicants, the largest number every to apply. "They range in age from 29 to 42 and include an Army surgeon, an engineer at SpaceX and a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor."
None of them is Japanese. In fact only one of them appears to have been born outside the US. Jasmin Moghbeli was born in Germany but "
considers Baldwin, New York, her hometown." She is a graduate of MIT, along with the professor and a couple of other candidates. Some attended the service academies (West Point, Air Force Academy, etc.) and most of the rest come from schools in California like Stanford and UC San Diego.
The article confirms a few events in Uchuu Kyoudai.
Quote:
Officially, they are “astronaut candidates” who will now go through two years of training before becoming full-fledged graduates. They will practice for spacewalks in a 60-foot-deep swimming pool at the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, learn to fly NASA’s T-38 jet planes and study the ins and outs of the International Space Station.
Because Russia is NASA’s main partner on the space station, they will also learn to speak Russian.
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Ah, so that's how Hibito was so fluent when he was in Russia. I didn't think Olga and the rest of his friends there were speaking Japanese, but I wondered if they were using English as a common language.
Here are the lucky dozen. (Warning: file is called "superjumbo" for a reason!):
Loral O'Hara reminds me a lot of Serika despite their very different ethnicities. A native of Houston, her academic biography is more distinctive with degrees from the University of Kansas and Purdue.
