The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has announced their 12 candidate picks for their astronaut corps on Wednesday, and among their choices are two Asian American candidates. Dr. Jonny Kim and Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Raja Chari were chosen from a record 18,300 applicants to undergo astronaut training at the Johnson Space Center and one day fly with NASA.
A congratulatory ceremony was held at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, where Vice President Mike Pence was in attendance. The vice president congratulated candidates and assured NASA that the American government would continue to support their endeavors into and around space.
Meet the #NewAstronauts! Selected from 18,000+ applicants, these 12 humans are now part of our 2017 astronaut class: https://t.co/xkVcTbkXsr pic.twitter.com/3JnHIblnWq
— NASA (@NASA) June 7, 2017
Kim and Chari will report for training in August and then await their chance to join the ranks of NASA’s astronauts and follow in the footsteps of names like Ellison Onizuka, a Japanese American who was the first Asian American to explore space aboard the shuttle Discovery in 1985.
NASA hasn’t launched a shuttle since 2011, making the future somewhat unclear for candidates, but, as Kim told reporters at the ceremony, they are all just “happy to be here.”
Get to know Kim and Chari by reading a short biography of each below, and find out more from NASA’s website:
Korean American Dr. Jonny Kim was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. He has a Bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the University of California, San Diego, where he graduated summa cum laude in 2012. He went on to earn a doctorate in medicine from the Harvard School of Medicine in 2016. He enlisted in the Navy as a seaman recruit after high school and served as a combat medic, sniper, navigator and point man over the course of two deployments to the Middle East. When he was chosen by NASA to be an astronaut candidate, he was working as a resident physician at the Massachusetts General Hospital.
Indian American Lt. Col. Raja Chari is from Cedar Falls, Wisconsin, and has a Bachelor’s degree in aeronautical engineering and engineering science from the U.S. Air Force Academy, who also named him a distinguished graduate of the Class of 1999. He served as commander of the 461st Flight Test Squadron and has over 2,000 hours of flight time under his belt accumulated over combat missions in Operation Iraqi freedom and deployments to the Korean peninsula. He is the second Indian American chosen by NASA for the astronaut training program.
