12 new astronauts, chosen by NASA from over 18,000 applicants
NASA has just chosen 12 new astronauts out of over 18,000 applicants, with this being its biggest pool of applicants ever, The Washington Post reports.
The 12 new astronauts, seven men and five women, were chosen out of more than 18,300 applicants that tried their luck during a brief applications period one and a half years ago. This beats the previous record of 8,000 by more than two times, a record which had been set in 1978 when the space shuttles were close to being launched.
The astronauts are engineers, pilots, military officers and doctors, with ages from 29 to 42. “It makes me personally feel very inadequate when you read what these folks have done,” said NASA’s acting administrator, Robert Lightfoot.
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They will join the 44 astronauts that are already in the NASA corps and after two years of training, they might take on commercial rockets to the ISS (International Space Station) or fly in the Orion spacecraft, intended to facilitate human exploration of asteroids and of Mars.
Vice President Mike Pence met the group in Houston, at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, and offered congratulations from President Donald Trump. “America will lead in space once again, and the world will marvel,” Pence declared.
There are currently 350 Americans that have been selected to become astronauts. The requirements for them include, besides U.S. citizenship, a minimum of three years of experience or 1,000 hours of piloting jets and degrees in math, engineering, science or technology.
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