{"id":37301,"date":"2025-09-22T20:44:06","date_gmt":"2025-09-22T20:44:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/37301\/"},"modified":"2025-09-22T20:44:06","modified_gmt":"2025-09-22T20:44:06","slug":"nasas-10-newest-astronauts-chosen-from-more-than-8000-applicants-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/37301\/","title":{"rendered":"Nasa\u2019s 10 newest astronauts chosen from more than 8,000 applicants"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">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<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">For the first time, there were more women than men in a Nasa astronaut class.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">They include a geologist who worked on Nasa\u2019s Curiosity Mars rover, a SpaceX engineer who flew on a billionaire-sponsored spaceflight that featured the world\u2019s first private spacewalk and a former SpaceX launch director.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The group will undergo two years of training before becoming eligible for spaceflight.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Acting administrator Sean Duffy said one of them could become the first person to step on Mars.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">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<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Only 370 people have been selected by Nasa as astronauts, making it an extraordinarily small and elite group composed mostly of men.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The latest additions \u2013 revealed during a ceremony at Nasa\u2019s Johnson Space Centre in Houston \u2013 will join 41 active US astronauts currently serving in the corps.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Nasa flight operations director Norm Knight said competition was stiff and called the newcomers \u201cdistinguished\u201d and \u201cexceptional\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nasa has introduced its newest astronauts, with the 10 scientists, engineers and test pilots chosen from more than&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37302,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[34404,34403,34402,3323,111,139,69,147,392],"class_list":["post-37301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-astronaut-candidates","tag-astronaut-class","tag-curiosity-mars-rover","tag-nasa","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37301\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}