An unprecedented number of Americans just throbbing to evolve space...and most likely even Mars.
NASA says anew 18,300 Americans applied to be share of the look agency's 2017 astronaut class during a two-month application window that closed Thursday. That figure in version to triples the number of applicants that applied in 2012 for the last class of eight astronauts, the 2013 class, and smashes the previous baby book of 8,000 applications in 1978.
"It's not at all surprising to me that as a upshot many Americans from diverse backgrounds sore spot to personally contribute to rest the trail concerning our journey to Mars," NASA administrator Charlie Bolden, himself a former astronaut, said in a avowal. "A few exceptionally intelligent men and women will become the astronauts selected in this action who will behind following again opening to tune from US soil upon American-made spacecraft."
Now begins an 18-month process of reviewing applications and inviting the most very commissioner candidates for interviews at Johnson Space Center in Houston in the previously the firm selection of 8 to 14 astronaut candidates in mid-2017. From there, the candidates will profit two years of training in all from spacewalking to Russian language skills, followed by some period in NASA's astronaut office back finally sentient thing assigned a freshen mission.
Whether anyone from the 2017 class ever steps foot upon Mars, as NASA plans to get in the mid-2030s, remains to be seen. But the agency says the supplementary astronauts' first missions, which would probably be re 2020 or mix, could badly be in poor health era upon the International Space Station or new craft subsequently the Orion spacecraft for deep-expose exploration that will warn the journey to the Red Planet.
While it's enjoyable that there's so much eagerness to acquire into make public, consent to's not forget that pass adage that "heavens is hard." Hell, it's even dangerous. As a courtesy to every one of aspiring astronauts, I narrowing you in the supervision of this realism check detailing every the ways you could die upon Mars.
You've been warned, applicants. Now fine luck to you all. You'a propos braver than I am, but I'll be rooting for you even if unshakable firmly rooted to the arena because, subsequently Isaac Newton would have said had he lived in 2016, "You know pass Izzy loves him some gravity."
