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45m ago

NASA Names 10 New Astronaut Candidates in First Majority‑Women Class

NASA cast the new cohort as future contributors to Artemis with an eye toward Mars.

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US Sen. Ted Cruz, right, makes comments as the astronaut candidate class of 2025 is introduced during a ceremony at the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, Monday, Sept. 22, 2025.
FILE - Workers on scaffolding repaint the NASA logo near the top of the Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., May 20, 2020. (AP Photo/John Raoux, File)
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Overview

  • NASA introduced 10 astronaut candidates selected from more than 8,000 applicants during a Johnson Space Center ceremony streamed on NASA platforms and Amazon Prime.
  • The group includes six women and four men and features Anna Menon, a Polaris Dawn veteran, as the first astronaut candidate with prior orbital spaceflight experience.
  • The candidates begin roughly two years of training to qualify for flight assignments to low Earth orbit destinations, lunar missions under Artemis, and, longer term, Mars.
  • Agency leaders highlighted plans to return Americans to the Moon before China and said members of this class could eventually be among the first Americans to reach Mars.
  • The class joins a corps of about 41 active U.S. astronauts and brings diverse expertise, including military test pilots, a Curiosity rover geologist, and a former SpaceX launch director.