Editor’s note: NASA on Monday announced the 10 newest astronauts to join its space corps in a ceremony at Ellington Field in Houston near NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. You can watch a replay of the announcement above. Our full story on the announcement will be posted shortly.
In the meantime, NASA’s new astronaut class includes four women and six men. They are:
- Nichole Ayers, 32, major, U.S. Air Force, of Colorado;
- Marcos Berríos, 37, major, U.S. Air Forceof Guaynabo, Puerto Rico;
- Christina Birch, 35, biochemist, of Gilbert, Arizona;
- Deniz Burnham, 36, lieutenant, U.S. Navy, of Wasilla, Alaska;
- Luke Delaney, 42, major, retired, U.S. Marine Corps, of Debary, Florida;
- Andre Douglas, 35, mechanical/electrical/computer engineer, of Virginia;
- Jack Hathaway, 39, commander, U.S. Navy, of Connecticut;
- Anil Menon, 45, lieutenant colonel, U.S. Air Force, of Minneapolis, Minnesota;
- Christopher Williams, 38, physicist, of Potomac, Maryland;
- Jessica Wittner, 38, lieutenant commander, U.S. Navy, of California.
NASA is ready to announce its next batch of astronaut candidates, and you can watch the event live.
The agency will announce the 2021 astronaut class today (Nov. 6) at 12:30 p.m. EST (0530 GMT). The event will run live on NASA Television, NASA social media channels, the NASA app and also here at Space.com.
More than 12,000 U.S. citizens applied in 2020 to become an astronaut of the “Artemis Generation”, or what NASA has termed the astronauts expected to participate in the Artemis program for moon missions and the planned lunar Gateway space station. Moonbound astronauts will fly on the Orion spacecraft and Deep Space Launch system that will have their first uncrewed moon mission together no earlier than February 2022.
The first Artemis crewed mission (in lunar orbit) is expected in 2024 and the first landing mission in 2025. Existing agency astronauts termed the “Artemis Team” will get those first seats, though, along with an unidentified Canadian who will fly on the 2024 Artemis II orbital mission under an agreement with the Canadian Space Agency.
Related: How To Become An Astronaut
While the new class would be eligible for Artemis assignments eventually, it’s unclear if they will reach the International Space Station — even though NASA’s announcement says the new astronaut candidates would qualify for full astronaut status and flight assignment to the orbiting complex after two years of training.
Since the new class would receive flight assignments no earlier than 2024, that pegs the timing in the same year as the current retirement date for the ISS. Even after being assigned to a flight, the astronauts’ mission training would take another couple of years — meaning the earliest the new class could get to the orbiting complex would be around 2026.
That said, NASA hopes to extend the ISS retirement date to 2028 or even 2030, and just revealed a bunch of commercial space station designs that the 2021 class may one day visit in the coming decade or so.
Related: How NASA’s Artemis moon landing with astronauts works
The new astronaut candidates will report to the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston in January 2022, where they will begin their two-year qualification cycle in aspects such as the Russian language, spacewalking skills, teamwork in isolated conditions, piloting high-performance aircraft and learning spacecraft systems.
NASA’s last astronaut class of 2017, nicknamed the Turtles, included 12 U.S. individuals split pretty evenly among male and female candidates; several international astronaut candidates also joined their respective country’s corps at that time.
The graduation ceremony for the Turtles took place in January 2020, minus NASA astronaut candidate Robb Kulin, who resigned partway through the training.
Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.