Astronauts!

A few weeks ago I wrote about my "retro-astro space race place," after revisiting the 60s and 70s via Hidden Figures, Apollo 13 and The Astronaut Wives Club. (Read it here.) At the time I had the idea in my head that the U.S. was mostly out of the astronaut business, but that's not true. Yesterday NASA introduced 12 new American astronauts who will train for two years to do cool stuff like launching on spacecraft built by commercial companies and departing for deep space missions (and hopefully coming back.) Here's NASA's Instagram announcement:

People of Earth…we happily introduce you to America’s #NewAstronauts! These 12 humans were selected from more than 18,300 applicants, which is more than double the previous record of 8,000 set in 1978. These astronaut candidates will return to Johnson Space Center in August to begin two years fo training. Then they could be assigned to any of a variety of missions, including: performing research on the International Space Station, launching from American soil on spacecraft built by commercial companies, and departing for deep space missions in our Orion spacecraft and Space Launch System rocket.  Applicants included U.S. citizens in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. territories Puerto Rico, Guam and America Samoa. The talented women and men selected for the new astronaut class represent the diversity of America and the career paths that can lead to a place in America’s astronaut corps.  Credit: NASA  #nasa #NewAstronauts #astronauts #space #humanspaceflight #exploration #classof2017 #2017 #astronautcandidates #training #announcement #picoftheday #spacecraft

A post shared by NASA (@nasa) on Jun 8, 2017 at 5:53am PDT