Privacy Policy.<\/a><\/p>\nLawler served in the U.S. Navy for 11 years as a pilot and is a former lieutenant commander. She also served as a hurricane hunter and test pilot for NOAA. She has a bachelor\u2019s degree in mechanical engineering from the U.S. Naval Academy and master\u2019s degrees from Johns Hopkins University and the National Test Pilot School.<\/p>\n
Menon worked as a senior engineer at SpaceX where she helped with crew operations for the Dragon and Starship spacecraft and flew to space aboard SpaceX\u2019s Polaris Dawn. She has a bachelor\u2019s degree from Texas Christian University, where she double majored in mathematics and Spanish, and also holds a master\u2019s degree in biomedical engineering from Duke University. <\/p>\n
Since NASA\u2019s first astronaut candidates, the \u201cMercury Seven,\u201d were selected in 1959, the agency has picked only 370 people to go through the rigorous training program. The selection process was developed to recruit highly qualified and educated civilian and military candidates for the special profession. <\/p>\n
To even be selected as a candidate is a huge achievement, and we are sure that Lawler and Menon will represent Texas proudly in the next era of space exploration. <\/p>\n
In September, they reported for duty as part of NASA\u2019s 24th astronaut class at the Johnson Space Center. For about two years, they will undergo a training program that includes land and water survival skills, robotics training, exposure to microgravity environments and learning Russian. <\/p>\n
Pursuing a career in space isn\u2019t easy, but both women have proved they are more than ready for the challenge. <\/p>\n
We are confident that their flight experience and impressive achievements in their careers so far will help them succeed throughout their training and ultimately on the space missions that await them. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Houston, the site of mission control for astronaut training, just got two new additions from Texas. Rebecca Lawler…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":95203,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[112,41984,27,29,28],"class_list":["post-95202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-editorials","tag-texan-of-the-year","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95202\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}