June 16, 2017
An Iranian-American woman, who is a major in the US Marines, is one of 12 people selected as part of NASA’s newest astronaut class.
Jasmin Moghbeli, 33, was born in Germany and grew up on Long Island. She will report to NASA in Houston in August for two years of training as an “astronaut candidate,” NASA said.
After completing her training, she could be assigned to conduct research on the International Space Station, launch on commercial spacecraft or fly on deep space exploration missions.
NASA selected the 2017 class of 12 astronaut candidates from more than 18,300 applications, a record number.
Ironically, Moghbeli’s selection comes only days after Iran’s space agency announced it was abandoning plans to send an astronaut into space. President Mahmud Ahmadi-nejad had set a 2018 goal for orbiting an Iranian astronaut. The Rohani Administration has now dropped that project, presumably because of the expense.
Moghbeli, who said she has wanted to be an astronaut since the sixth grade, talked about what kind of candidate it takes to earn the coveted spot.
“Start looking into science, technology, engineering, math, those kinds of fields,” she said. But whatever you do, love it, she said.
“There were many other applicants that applied who were extremely qualified for this position that aren’t lucky enough to be sitting up here like I am,” she said. “So make sure you’re doing what you love. If I did not get the call saying, ‘Hey can you join us here at NASA?’ I still would’ve been extremely happy in the career that I was in.”
The seven men and five women of the class bring an impressive resume to NASA: The astronaut candidates are an athletic crew and include former SpaceX employees and a marine biologist. Half of them are military officers.
“You are the 12 who made it through; you have joined the elites; you are the best of us,” Vice President Mike Pence said at a ceremony introducing the candidates last Wednesday. “These are 12 men and women whose personal excellence and whose personal courage will carry our nation to even greater heights of discovery.”
Moghbeli earned a degree in aerospace engineering with information technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She went on to earn a master’s degree in aerospace engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. She also graduated from the US Navy Test Pilot School and holds the rank of major with the Marines.
As a pilot, she has logged more than 1,600 hours of flight time and 150 combat missions. She currently works testing H-1 helicopters and serving as a quality assurance officer with the Marines in Yuma, Arizona.
Her parents, Fereshteh and Kamy Moghbeli, currently live in Delray Beach, Florida.
The only Iranian to have flown in space up to now is Anousheh Ansari, now 50, a Mashhad-born American engineer and businesswoman. In 2006, she paid the Russian spaceflight agency to train with them and spent eight days aboard the International Space Station.