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As the possibility of going to space grows, U.S. astronauts still don’t know how they get picked to fly - The Washington Post

As the possibility of going to space grows, U.S. astronauts still don’t know how they get picked to fly - The Washington Post

As the possibility of going to space grows, U.S. astronauts still don’t know how they get picked to fly - The Washington Post
Sep 15, 2020 2 mins, 55 secs

Like its overachieving predecessors, full of doctorates and service medals, the newest class of NASA astronauts has its share of decorated military officers and esteemed scientists — even a Navy SEAL who got his medical degree from Harvard.

It is a significant change from the previous decade, when, after the space shuttle was retired in 2011, the only way to space was by hitching a ride on a Russian rocket that blasted off from a desolate launchpad in Kazakhstan — so far away that many Americans didn’t realize NASA’s astronauts were still flying to space routinely.

There’s SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft, which in May became the first spacecraft to launch NASA astronauts from United States soil in nearly a decade.

All of which means it’s an exciting time to be an astronaut, especially as the highly coveted assignments for the 48-member NASA astronaut corps in Houston are being handed out.

It’s also a chance for NASA to showcase its astronauts and attempt to rekindle the national enthusiasm they once inspired.

Jim Bridenstine, the NASA administrator and a former member of Congress, has led a campaign of sorts to highlight this new generation of astronauts.

“I’d like to see kids growing up, instead of maybe wanting to be like a professional sports star, I’d like to see them grow up wanting to be a NASA astronaut, or a NASA scientist,” Bridenstine said in 2018.

That flight will feature a crew of four, NASA astronauts Victor Glover, Shannon Walker, Michael Hopkins and Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi.

“The process is mysterious on the inside, too,” Leroy Chiao, a former NASA astronaut, said in an interview.

“A number of factors are considered when making flight assignments,” a spokesperson for NASA said at the time.

“They keep it very close hold,” said Janet Kavandi, who flew three space shuttle missions as a NASA astronaut and now heads Sierra Nevada Corp.’s space systems business.

When former NASA astronaut Mike Massimino was chosen for his first flight assignment, a mission to the Hubble Space Telescope in 2002, Steve Smith, the deputy chief astronaut, knew the Friday before but was sworn to secrecy until Monday.

And the astronaut office prizes teamwork over individuality?

“They want to avoid rivalry within the astronaut office itself, which would not be healthy for what is supposed to be a team working together to achieve a common goal,” Pearlman said.

And the chief astronaut, who is primarily responsible for the decision, looks at a variety of factors, the most important of which is: “What is going to make the mission most successful,” said Peggy Whitson, who was chief astronaut from 2009 to 2012, a position now held by Pat Forrester.

NASA has long looked for a “mix of specialties and backgrounds so that everyone would educate each other with the best of what they knew,” said Michael Cassutt, who has written biographies of Deke Slayton and George Abbey, both NASA legends who spent years selecting astronauts for missions.

Eshoo (D-Calif.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) at an event last year, he got this reaction: “I look forward to a woman astronaut landing on the moon,” Eshoo said

But it will be different in one key respect, Bridenstine said: He would like to see the missions showcase an astronaut corps that is far more diverse than those of the 1960s and 70s

“When we do select the corps of astronauts that will be flying they must be reflective of the nation as a whole,” he said in an interview

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