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One day the destination could be Mars, but Tuesday it was Houston.
Harvard scientist and Caribou, Maine native Jessica Meir and her seven classmates were formally welcomed to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston Tuesday as the space agency’s newest astronaut class officially reported for duty.
Dubbed the “Eight Balls,” Meir and her NASA colleagues were selected in June from a pool of more than 6,000 candidates. The NASA class is expected to be among the first to fly on new commercial space transportation systems that are now under development. They will also be among those to plan and perhaps even carry out the first human mission to an asteroid and Mars.
The class is historically diverse, including four men (Josh Cassada, Victor Glover, Nick Hague and Andrew Morgan) and four women (Meir, Christina Hammock, Nicole Mann, Anne McClain).
As NASA administrator Charles Bolden welcomed the candidates to the astronaut corps, he unveiled a space exploration roadmap that shows a unified international community committed to deep space exploration. In the plans are robotic and human missions to near-Earth asteroids, the moon, and Mars.
“They are being asked to carry on this extraordinary legacy and ensure the United States remains the world’s leader in exploration and scientific discovery — carrying with them America’s hopes, dreams and curiosity deep into space, first to an asteroid and one day on to Mars,” Bolden said in a press release.
It will take a minimum of two years before the “Eight Balls” will be eligible for a mission assignment. For now, it’s basic training. But space flight being an extraordinary endeavor, the astronauts’ basic training is far from basic. It includes everything from mastering the complex technical details of living on the international space station to supersonic jet flight training.
The Curiosity Desk sat down with Jessica Meir in June just after she received word that she’d been selected by NASA. Learn more about her story and her futurehere.
