<\/p>\n
NASA<\/p>\n
Nasa has introduced its newest astronauts, with the 10 scientists, engineers and test pilots chosen from more than 8,000 applicants to help explore the Moon and possibly Mars.<\/p>\n
For the first time, there were more women than men in a Nasa astronaut class.<\/p>\n
They include a geologist who worked on Nasa’s Curiosity Mars rover, a SpaceX engineer who flew on a billionaire-sponsored spaceflight that featured the world’s first private spacewalk and a former SpaceX launch director.<\/p>\n
The group will undergo two years of training before becoming eligible for spaceflight.<\/p>\n
Acting administrator Sean Duffy said one of them could become the first person to step on Mars.<\/p>\n
It is the 24th astronaut class for Nasa since the original Mercury Seven made their debut in 1959. The previous class was in 2021.<\/p>\n
Only 370 people have been selected by Nasa as astronauts, making it an extraordinarily small and elite group composed mostly of men.<\/p>\n
The latest additions – revealed during a ceremony at Nasa’s Johnson Space Centre in Houston – will join 41 active US astronauts currently serving in the corps.<\/p>\n
Nasa flight operations director Norm Knight said competition was stiff and called the newcomers “distinguished” and “exceptional”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NASA Nasa has introduced its newest astronauts, with the 10 scientists, engineers and test pilots chosen from more…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36981,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[61,60,898,82,247],"class_list":{"0":"post-36980","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-latest-news-ticker","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-space"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36980"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36980\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}