A nervous Jack Hathaway had one final impediment to beat earlier than turning into a NASA astronaut candidate: discovering the time to listen to the information.Hathaway was awaiting a name in 2021 from NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman, then chief of the astronaut workplace, to listen to if he may additionally be part of the company. However Hathaway was on the provider ship USS Truman, far at sea and flying with Strike Fighter Squadron 81. So the U.S. Navy commander and pilot stored lacking the essential name, he advised House.com.”Lastly, on the finish of the afternoon, he despatched me an e mail,” Hathaway stated on March 5. Hathaway completed his each day piloting duties, learn his emails and scurried to a prepared room to make use of an open line, which is “you understand, a bunch space.” Unluckily, the second Wiseman advised Hathaway the provider pilot would want to start out packing for NASA coaching, a bunch of officers walked by on patrol and noticed an excited Hathaway silently placing his arms on his head.The officers knew Hathaway, who graduated from astronaut candidate coaching this month, all too nicely: they had been “paddles,” the individuals answerable for grading each Navy aviator’s provider touchdown. “They watched my response,” Hathaway recounted, “they usually instantly walked down the size of the ship to speak to all the opposite prepared rooms. They advised everybody they noticed. So I used to be not profitable, holding it a secret.”Associated: NASA graduates new astronaut class because it begins recruiting for moreHathaway and 11 different astronaut candidates — 10 from NASA and two from the United Arab Emirates — completed 2.5 years of fundamental coaching this month and are eligible for future missions. They’ve a wealthy array of spaceflight prospects to get pleasure from: doable moon or lunar area station flights for the Artemis program, months-long missions on the Worldwide House Station (ISS) and missions to future industrial area stations which might be in improvement. To make certain, the method is not going to be obstacle-free: the primary two deliberate Artemis crewed missions had been delayed in January as a consequence of technical gremlins, and NASA is going through a smaller price range in fiscal yr 2025 which will additional have an effect on mission planning. However the brand new astronauts really feel vitality, and optimism, when trying on an extended timescale of a decade or extra.”There’s simply a lot to be enthusiastic about,” Hathaway stated. “There’s quite a lot of laborious work that the entire crew goes to must do. The entire thing is simply such a cool time to be a part of the [astronaut] workplace. You are coming into the workplace with all of the industrial companions doing lunar landings and lunar missions, and the chance to have a number of industrial companions constructing lunar landers and human touchdown techniques. I am simply actually enthusiastic about this.”Associated: Get to the choppa! Artemis 2 moon astronauts follow splashdown with U.S. Navy (pictures, video)Then-astronaut candidate Jack Hathaway was among the many group flying T-38 trainers by the Artemis 1 moon rocket on Aug. 23, 2022. (Picture credit score: NASA/Josh Valcarcel)New astronaut and U.S. Navy lieutenant commander Jessica Wittner, an aviation machinist by coaching, stated she is happy for a way her previous “tinkering across the storage” will assist with a number of spacecraft applications. The ageing ISS will want extra upkeep work, and industrial stations will want consideration after they come on-line within the 2030s. In the meantime, each experiment she works on in area or on the bottom would require people who find themselves comfy with being “actually hands-on with the tools.” One in every of her first duties after commencement can even be engaged on new spacesuits for astronauts.”It is an extremely busy time to be a part of NASA, and to be a part of the area business simply usually. And I feel that the astronauts are going to proceed to play a big half in that business,” she stated, pointing to the flight expertise they will convey to completely different engineering groups and firms trying to broaden their very own low Earth orbit expertise for future industrial area stations. NASA astronaut Jessica Wittner inspects a T-38 jet coach in 2023. (Picture credit score: NASA/Josh Valcarcel)As individuals fly to quite a lot of environments, each lunar and orbital, flight surgeon and new astronaut Anil Menon stated there can be new medical situations to handle alongside the best way. Corporations like Axiom House are additionally now flying civilians to the ISS, presenting a wider vary of individuals (medically talking) than you sometimes would see within the NASA astronaut group. “I feel that opens up doorways for studying, for all of us,” Menon advised House.com. “After we go to the moon, after we go to Mars, after we assume generations down — we would like that to be all people with the ability to fly and take part within the area program . . . (however) we have to begin studying about how completely different individuals react after they stand up there. This is step one in that path.”Associated: Europe’s new astronaut class options 2 girls and a paralympian trauma surgeonNASA astronaut Anil Menon doing coaching with an Artemis moon program Orion spacesuit. (Picture credit score: NASA/David DeHoyos)Artemis is the massive program on the quick horizon for the brand new astronauts. Artemis 2’s 4 astronauts have been named and are deep in coaching for his or her 2025 round-the-moon mission. Artemis 3 has not but named its crew for touchdown on the moon no sooner than 2026, leaving a slight likelihood for the brand new astronauts to affix. Artemis 4 and past, to not point out missions to NASA’s deliberate Gateway lunar area station, are stronger prospects for the brand new astronaut group.”What excites me is that it is new. I’ve all the time been fascinated with new issues; I wish to develop issues,” new NASA astronaut Andre Douglas advised House.com about Artemis. Douglas, actually, all the time has studying alternatives in his thoughts for profession strikes. That is why he left the Coast Guard to affix the Johns Hopkins College Utilized Physics Laboratory as an engineer previous to signing up for NASA.NASA astronaut Andre Douglas throughout spacewalk or extravehicular exercise coaching at NASA’s Impartial Buoyancy Laboratory in Houston. (Picture credit score: NASA/James Blair)”I wanted to unravel new issues and deal with new challenges, as a result of I actually imagine in pushing ourselves, in understanding what’s our true potential — each me as a person and inside all of us as a species,” he stated. “Going to the moon, after which going to Mars, that simply blows my thoughts. We will take the issues we have seen in Hollywood and attempt to make {that a} actuality. So as an alternative of fearing the unknown, let’s attempt to deal with it. That is sort of my motto.”When requested what excites him concerning the Artemis program, naval aviator and new astronaut Jack Delaney quipped, “What is not thrilling?” However the retired U.S. Marine main stated that, as a pilot, he is all for studying learn how to handle energy throughout a difficult moon touchdown, which was a tough process for the navy pilots of the Apollo program within the Sixties and early ’70s as nicely.”You’ll be able to’t put limitless quantity of energy on a car,” he stated. “So what instrumentation do you placed on there, to successfully [and] mainly on the moon keep away from obstacles whereas touchdown on the south pole, the place the daylight is at such a low angle?”Pondering over the “darkish pockets” and “visible illusions” the deep polar shadows would convey, Delaney emphasised that success should come from a “human within the loop to make real-time selections” with a succesful spacecraft “outfitted with the suitable instrumentation.” These are all issues, he added, “I am all for getting concerned in, and beginning to make selections for our long-term presence there.”New astronaut and medical physicist Christopher Williams emphasised that his crew is able to go to the moon, and to make use of their abilities to get there. “It simply provides me goosebumps that among the of us that I walked throughout the stage with in the present day, I feel, are going to be on the moon,” he advised House.com. “We’re not solely rising, however including to our portfolio, getting past low Earth orbit. I feel it connects with lots of people by way of exploration and getting on the market.”