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NASA
chose 12 new astronauts Wednesday from its biggest pool of applicants ever,
selecting seven men and five women who could one day fly aboard the nation's
next generation of spacecraft. The astronaut class of 2017 includes doctors,
scientists, engineers, pilots and military officers from Anchorage to Miami and
points in between. They've worked in submarines, emergency rooms, university
lecture halls, jet cockpits and battleships. They range in age from 29 to 42,
and they typically led the pack.
"It
makes me personally feel very inadequate when you read what these folks have
done," said NASA's acting administrator, Robert Lightfoot. Vice President
Mike Pence welcomed the group during a televised ceremony at NASA's Johnson
Space Center in Houston. He offered President Donald Trump's congratulations
and noted that the president was "firmly committed to NASA's noble
mission, leading America in space."
Pence
assured the crowd that NASA would have the resources and support necessary to
continue to make history. "Under President Donald Trump, America will lead
in space once again, and the world will marvel," he said. More than 18,300
people threw their hats into the space ring during a brief application period
1½ years ago. That's more than double the previous record of 8,000, set in 1978
when the space shuttles were close to launching. The 12 selected Wednesday will
join 44 astronauts already in the NASA corps. U.S. astronauts have not launched
from home soil since 2011, thus the low head count. But that could change next
year.
After two
years of training, the newbies may end up riding commercial rockets to the
International Space Station or flying beyond the moon in NASA's Orion
spacecraft. Their ultimate destination could be Mars. SpaceX and Boeing are
building capsules capable of carrying astronauts to the space station and back,
as soon as next year. A launch engineer and senior manager for SpaceX, Robb
Kulin, is among the new astronauts. He's also worked as an ice driller in
Antarctica and a commercial fisherman in Alaska.
"Hopefully,
one day, I actually fly on a vehicle that ... I got to design," Kulin
said. Kulin and his classmates may be in for a long wait for space. Some
members of the class of 2009 have yet to launch. Jack Fischer, who was in that
group, just got to the space station in April, but he said he couldn't be
happier as he showed the latest hires their "new office" in a video. "It's
a little bit cramped," he said. "The desk is kind of small. But the
view. Oh, the view." This is NASA's 22nd group of astronauts. The first
group, the original Mercury 7 astronauts, was chosen in 1959.
Altogether,
350 Americans have now been selected to become astronauts. Requirements include
U.S. citizenship; degrees in science, technology, engineering or math; and at
least three years of experience or 1,000 hours of piloting jets.