NASA Picks CA Candidates To Become Astronauts

CALIFORNIA — NASA announced its latest batch of new astronauts Monday, including one Californian and several other candidates who have trained in the Golden State.

The 10 new astronauts of the Artemis generation will train for deep space missions including the moon, NASA said Monday.

Trainees for NASA's first class in four years were selected from a pool of more than 12,000 applicants.

"Alone, each candidate has 'the right stuff,' but together they represent the creed of our country: E pluribus unum – out of many, one," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said.

The new astronaut candidates will begin their two-year program in January 2022 at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, where they will train for spacewalks, develop complex robotics skills and operate a T-38 training jet.

"We’ve made many giant leaps throughout the last 60 years, fulfilling President Kennedy’s goal of landing a man on the moon," said Johnson center Director Vanessa Wyche. “Today we reach further into the stars as we push forward to the Moon once again and on to Mars with NASA’s newest astronaut candidate class."

After completing their training, astronauts could launch from U.S. soil on spacecrafts built by commercial companies to be assigned research missions aboard the space station.

NASA has selected 360 astronauts since the original Mercury Seven in 1959, including the 10 new members.

U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander Jessica Wittner, 38, was the only native Californian candidate, while three others trained or studied in the Golden State.

Wittner studied engineering at the University of Arizona before she was commissioned as a naval officer to fly F/A-18 Hornet fighter jets. She later worked as a test pilot and project officer in China Lake.

Deniz Burnham, 36, serves in the U.S. Navy Reserves and calls Alaska home, but she studied chemical engineering at the University of California, San Diego and earned her master's degree at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Christina Birch, 35, calls Arizona home, but she taught bioengineering at the University of California, Riverside and scientific writing and communication at the California Institute of Technology.

Marcos Berríos, a U.S. Air Force major, grew up in Guayanabo, Puerto Rico, but worked as an aerospace engineer for the U.S. Army Aviation Development Directorate at Moffett Federal Airfield in California.