Get to know a little bit about NASA's 2024 astronaut candidates.
The candidates are "U.S. Army CW3 Ben Bailey, U.S. Air Force Maj. Cameron Jones, Katherine Spies, Anna Menon, U.S. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Erin Overcash, U.S. Air Force Maj. Adam Fuhrmann, Dr. Lauren Edgar, Yuri Kubo, Rebecca Lawler, and Dr. Imelda Muller," according to NASA.
00:00All right, now for some of you, this is not your first introduction to NASA, and we are excited
00:04to have you back. So Lauren, Yuri, and Becky, tell us about your previous experiences here at NASA
00:11and what your job was at the time of selection. All right, I'm Lauren Edgar, and I am so excited
00:18and honored to be here today. My NASA experience actually dates back to my days as a NASA intern
00:24working at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. I spent two summers there, and then I participated
00:28in a number of NASA programs throughout college and grad school. More recently, I've been
00:33working at the U.S. Geological Survey and helping to contribute to the exploration of the moon
00:38and Mars. So I've participated in NASA missions. I've contributed to some of the geology training
00:44and testing. I've worked on the Mars Exploration Rover Mission, Curiosity Mars Rover Mission,
00:49working with JPL, and most recently, the Artemis III science team. And through these experiences,
00:54I've had the chance to see the amazing team that makes this all possible, and I just
00:58wanted to say I am so excited to be officially part of the NASA family and can't wait to be serving
01:03in this role along with all of my new classmates here. Thank you.
01:06Hi, my name is Yuri Kubo. Super excited to be here and deeply honored to be a part of this class as well
01:20as the NASA family. Actually, much like Lauren, I started here back in college. I was a co-op right here
01:28at the Johnson Space Center, actually. It feels a lot like a kind of a homecoming, a really nice homecoming to come back.
01:33So I spent seven tours here at Johnson Space Center across both the engineering side of the house as well as
01:38the flight operations side. So I got a good taste of what it was to be a part of this incredible community of dedicated people.
01:47Fast forward to more recently, I was, at the time of selection, I was a senior vice president of engineering at a company called
01:54Electric Hydrogen, where I was working with an amazing team trying to build electrolyzers that split water into oxygen and hydrogen to make energy for a lot of key industries. Thanks.
02:07Hi, I'm Becky Lawler, and it is just an awesome honor to be able to be up here today. My previous work with NASA was actually through interagency work that NASA does.
02:25When I was in the Navy, I flew as a guest research pilot on Operation Ice Bridge in the NASA P3 out of Northern Greenland.
02:34I was giving away the next part. My second time working with NASA was I was working for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,
02:41sometimes referred to as NOAA, and I was a NOAA commissioned officer, and I got to work with NASA on certifying instruments that were really important in forecasting hurricanes
02:52during hurricane seasons for the NOAA hurricane hunters. And at the time of my selection, I was United Airlines flight test captain and technical pilot, which is a test pilot, and I'm so excited to use all those experiences,
03:03and everything to be a part of this incredible team and play my role in our endeavors as a class.
03:10Okay, and now two of you come to us with a medical background. So Anna and Mel, tell us a little bit about your background and what you're excited for in the future of space medicine.
03:27Hi, I'm Anna Menon, and I was here at NASA's Johnson Space Center. I worked as a biomedical flight controller, and in that role, our job was to support the medical hardware and software on the International Space Station and help keep the astronauts healthy and safe from mission control.
03:47I am so thrilled to be back here with the NASA family. And, you know, as I reflect on the future of space medicine, I think it's really bright.
03:56We are born into 1G, and so when you go into 0G, so many things change. As more and more people venture into space and we seek to go further than ever before, we have this awesome opportunity to learn a tremendous amount to help support those astronauts and those people that are flying in those
04:16adventures and help keep them healthy and safe. So it's an exciting time to be here and I couldn't be more thrilled than honored.
04:31My name is Imelda Muller. I sometimes go by Mel. And previously, I was an undersea medical officer with the Navy. And that experience gave me the opportunity to work with multidisciplinary teams in experimental and saturation diving.
04:45And I developed a passion for learning about the way the body adapts in extreme environments. And this led me to pursue medical residency training in anesthesia where I deepened that understanding of how our body responds when it's under stress.
05:00I'm incredibly excited to be here alongside this team and to build on that foundation with the greater NASA community because, as Anna alluded to, with upcoming exploration missions, we are pushing the boundaries of human performance.
05:14And the lessons that we learn, the knowledge that we gain, all of these things are going to help us to excel, not just in space, but in areas of human health here on Earth. The future of space medicine is now and I'm incredibly honored to be here with this team.
05:31We have six test pilots in the group. The following questions are for a few of you, our jet pilots, Adam, Cameron, and Aaron. One of the highlights of my career was being the person, along with April Jordan, to let you know that you have a
06:01that had been selected to join the astronaut corps. The responses were varied and they were awesome. So two questions. What was it like to get that call? And how do you think your flight test background will help you in your astronaut training?
06:20Hello, everyone. At first, I was just in disbelief. I had to take the first exit and finish the conversation in a parking lot just to make sure I was hearing you right, Joe.
06:30But then came the excitement and just extreme gratitude for the opportunity to join this amazing team. And I was happy to finish the drive home and share that news with my wife and kids who are here with us today.
06:42As far as experience in flight test, as test pilots, we don't do anything on our own. We work with amazing teams of engineers and maintenance professionals to plan, simulate, and then execute complex and sometimes risky missions in aircraft to collect data and accomplish a mission, all while assessing risk and making smart calls as a team to do that as safely as possible.
07:05And I'm happy to try to bring some of that experience to do the same thing with the NASA team and learn from everyone at Johnson Space Center how to apply those lessons to human space flight.
07:12Hey, everybody. I'm Cameron Jones. I got the call from Joe in April about two months ago. And about two months and three days ago, I just finished a cross-country move from California to DC. So we were sitting on the floor of our new empty house, my wife, my daughter, and I with no furniture.
07:40And the call came through, and I don't think my one-year-old knew exactly what was going on, but I must have had a pretty big smile on my face because she let out a perfectly timed gleeful scream that went through both sides of the call and got good laughs from the other end of the phone as well.
07:53So I'm also really excited to be here, but that brings up my test pilot skill that I'm going to focus on, which is adaptability and resiliency.
08:00So maybe it's a move cross-country. Maybe it's a dynamic situation up in an airplane, but I think that'll transport into this domain.
08:10Hello. I'm Erin Overcash, callsign loft. And when I got the call, I was about a week away from joining my next squadron on deployment. So I had my sea bags packed, ready to go meet the aircraft carrier.
08:26I had just finished flight training for the day. And my spouse and I were on the couch. We get a call from an unknown number and we both look at each other.
08:35And then we were like throwing blankets and pillows. Oh my gosh, where's the remote? Turn the TV off. And we had like one last pause of a moment, make an eye contact knowing that this phone call could change our lives. And it did.
08:46Then the way Joe phrased his part of the conversation, he effectively said, do you still want the job? And the first words that I said on the phone were no way.
08:58I mean, I mean, yes, of course, but like, no way. And then not specific to my flight test, but just being in the Navy, I think any sailor would tell you we spend a lot of time stuck in a hot metal box or sometimes a cold metal box in the middle of the ocean.
09:12And when you share that space with 5,000 people, there's no such thing as privacy or personal space. And you really have to get to know your, your people that you work with very well, both good and bad.
09:22You have to learn how to set clear boundaries and respect each other, not just to survive, but really thrive as a team. And so that's some perspective I hope to bring to our astronaut candidate group.
09:32We're all very glad that no way meant yes. Thanks for that. Now let's talk to our two helicopter pilots, Ben and Kate. What are you most excited about for your upcoming training?
09:54Yeah, good morning. I'm Ben Bailey. And the next two years of ASCAN training are exciting. You know, language training, flight training, spacewalk training, robotics, all of that, each one of those would be very exciting in its own right.
10:14I would be excited to do any one of those individually and to look and combine all of those over the next two years is extremely exciting.
10:20So I can't pick out a single one alone, but all of them together are just fantastic. And more than that, I'm really excited that the next two years we spent with the other nine here on stage with me, I'm really excited to see everybody's strengths as we tackle those challenges together.
10:37Good morning, I'm Catherine Spies and Ben knows this but when you're flying a helicopter and you're sitting in the cockpit, there is a lot going on.
10:54The rotors are vibrating your seat and you can see the flicker of the blades over the top of your field of view and you're reading the instruments and you've got voices coming into the radio in your helmet.
11:06And all of these inputs are the language of your aircraft and it's the same language that connects us across squadrons and other disciplines and even countries.
11:16And this is what makes big things happen. And I think in the next two years of astronaut candidate training, the thing that I'm super pumped about is learning the language of human space flight.
11:29Not that we're not having fun already, but how about a little more fun.
11:50So y'all have worked around the world and trained for various career or personal events.
11:55So why don't you share with us something that maybe not everyone would know about you?
12:01Okay, I'll start. I spent my first year as a naval officer in the Navy's world class athlete program.
12:07So I was effectively a professional rugby player. I lived and trained full time at the Olympic Training Center with the USA rugby team.
12:14I'll go next. Some of you might be familiar with a sport called ultimate frisbee.
12:26What some of you might not know is it became a professional sport actually in 2012.
12:31And I had the honor of representing Indianapolis, Indiana as a professional athlete for the inaugural year of that sport.
12:38All right. Well, those who know me well, including my nine new best friends on the stage here, know that I love to do handstands everywhere that I go.
12:52I grew up doing gymnastics and I've always loved the outdoors.
12:56So it kind of evolved from climb a mountain to a handstand at the top.
12:59But it seems to have followed me everywhere around the world on tops of mountains, on top of glaciers, the bottom of the Grand Canyon,
13:05pretty much everywhere that I've gone except on this stage today.
13:08Well, Lauren, that is great news.
13:20My New Year's resolution this year was to learn to walk on my hands.
13:24I have made zero progress.
13:27But maybe before the end of December, I can get a few pointers.
Be the first to comment