After an extensive year-and-a-half search, NASA has a new group of potential astronauts who will help the agency push the boundaries of exploration and travel to new destinations in the solar system.
Eight candidates, half of them women, have been selected to be NASA's newest astronaut trainees, the U.S. space agency said in a press release.
The 2013 astronaut candidate class comes from the second largest number of applications NASA ever has received -- more than 6,100. The group will receive a wide array of technical training at space centers around the globe to prepare for missions to low-Earth orbit, an asteroid and Mars.
"These new space explorers asked to join NASA because they know we're doing big, bold things here -- developing missions to go farther into space than ever before," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden.
"They're excited about the science we're doing on the International Space Station and our plan to launch from U.S. soil to there on spacecraft built by American companies. And they're ready to help lead the first human mission to an asteroid and then on to Mars," he added.
The new astronaut candidates are: Josh A. Cassada, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer for Quantum Opus; Victor J. Glover, a Lt. Commander in U.S. Navy who is serving as a Navy Legislative Fellow in the U.S. Congress; Lt. Colonel Tyler N. Hague, Deputy Chief of the Defense Department's Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization; Christina M. Hammock, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Station Chief in American Samoa; Nicole Aunapu Mann, an F/A 18 pilot currently serving as an Integrated Product Team Lead at the U.S. Naval Air Station, Patuxent River; Major Anne C. McClain, an OH-58 helicopter pilot; Jessica U. Meir, Assistant Professor of Anesthesia at Harvard Medical School; and Major Andrew R. Morgan, who is experienced as an emergency physician and flight surgeon for the Army special operations community.
The new astronaut candidates will begin training at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston in August.
"This year we have selected eight highly qualified individuals who have demonstrated impressive strengths academically, operationally, and physically" said Janet Kavandi, Director of Flight Crew Operations at Johnson Space Center.
"They have diverse backgrounds and skill sets that will contribute greatly to the existing astronaut corps," she added, and expressed confidence that "they will apply their combined expertise and talents to achieve great things for NASA and this country in the pursuit of human exploration."
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