HOUSTON – NASA on Tuesday introduced the 10 people selected from a pool of 8,000 applicants, who will join the agency’s astronaut corps as it races to return to the moon before attempting an unprecedented crewed mission to Mars. The group includes six women and four men, whom acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy called “America’s best and brightest.” “And we’re going to need America’s best and brightest (for) all our exploration plans for the future,” Duffy said. “We are going back to the moon. … And I’ll just tell you this, I’ll be damned if the Chinese beat NASA or beat America back to the moon.” The 10 inductees include Ben Bailey, a mechanical engineer and chief warrant officer 3 for the Army from Charlottesville, Virginia; Lauren Edgar, a geologist from Sammamish, Washington; Adam Fuhrmann, an aerospace engineer and Air Force major from Leesburg, Virginia; Cameron Jones, an aerospace engineer and Air Force major from Savanna, Illinois; Yuri Kubo, an electrical and computer engineer and former NASA worker and SpaceX launch director from Columbus, Indiana; Rebecca Lawler, a former lieutenant commander and test pilot in the Navy from Little Elm, Texas; Imelda Muller, a former Navy lieutenant and undersea medical officer from Copake Falls, New York; Erin Overcash, a lieutenant commander and test pilot in the Navy from Goshen, Kentucky; Katherine Spies, a design engineer and former Marine Corps test pilot from San Diego; and Anna Menon, a biomedical engineer and former SpaceX employee from Houston. This astronaut class marks the first in which there are more women than men, according to NASA. The agency also confirmed that Menon is the first person ever to join the NASA astronaut corps who has previously flown to orbit.
While working at SpaceX, Menon was selected by tech billionaire Jared Isaacman to join him on Polaris Dawn, an experimental mission that traveled higher in its orbit around Earth than any crewed spacecraft had flown in decades. The mission, conducted last year aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, also included the first spacewalk carried out by the private sector. Menon will join her husband, Anil Menon, in the astronaut corps. Anil is also a former SpaceX employee, and he was chosen for the NASA astronaut corps during the last round of selections in 2021. Jones, the Air Force major from Illinois, said Menon is already being peppered with questions from her classmates. “She’s so gracious,” Jones said. “We’re going to be leaning on her expertise; she just has an amazing story of what she’s been able to accomplish and is just so proficient and incredible.”
Jones added that, for him, becoming an astronaut has been a lifelong pursuit — in part because Space Shuttle-era NASA astronaut Dale Gardner hailed from the same tiny town. “Every time I walked by the trophy case in high school, there was his picture with a flag that he flew while he was in space,” Jones told CNN. “That kind of gave me the thought: Even someone from a small town could go out and do something like this.”
