Astronaut hopefuls waited for that call
Culled from some 3,000 people, these 10 report to JSC in January
Deniz Burnham was staying with her mom in California when a Houston area code popped onto her phone. Was it the call she’d been waiting for?
“Working in oil and gas, getting a phone call from a Houston area code is not abnormal,” said Burnham, a drilling engineer who lived in Alaska at the time. “So when I see the number I’m thinking like, ‘Maybe? Could it be?’ ”
Jack Hathaway missed his phone call. The naval aviator was in a pre-deployment exercise off the coast of Virginia. He opened his email at the end of the day and recalled reading a message that said, “Jack, you have missed the phone call. What are you doing? Please call me.”
These calls were the culmination of a rigorous, monthslong interview process. And on Monday, NASA named 10 people, including these two, who would join the 2021 astronaut candidate class. They were selected from more than 12,000 applicants.
“It always renews my faith in humanity,” said astronaut selection manager Anne Roemer. “We have so many talented Americans who are interested in exploring the solar system.”
NASA accepted these applications in March 2020. And for the first time, a master’s degree (or similar academic degree, such as a doctor of medicine, or completion of a test pilot program) was required to apply.
The agency had previously said a master’s was preferred, though most astronaut candidates it selected had this level of education or had completed test pilot school (or both). So the requirement was an effort to be more transparent, Roemer said.
NASA whittled its list down to roughly 3,000 people by cutting applicants who lacked a master’s degree — NASA always gets people who aren’t qualified, and then it gets requests for rejection letters — and those who had lower scores on a com
petency assessment for traits such as teamwork, leadership and communication.
Subject matter experts reviewed files for the 3,000 candidates, and then 120 people were invited to the first round of in-person interviews and 30 were invited to the second round of interviews. These interviews were delayed until the COVID vaccines were available.
“We didn’t want to compromise on doing the interview piece of the process in person,” Roemer said. “There’s so much value in connecting face-to-face.”
The first round started in May where each applicant sat in front of the astronaut selection board alone. Roemer described this as a more typical (“although maybe a little more intimidating”) job interview with questions about life and work experience.
The second round of interviews were held in August and September. These interviews included preliminary medical testing and measurements to ensure the applicants could fit in the spacecraft seats and be strapped in for launch.
NASA also evaluated the applicants as they completed various exercises. For instance, the applicants might be placed in groups and asked to complete a project under a difficult time constraint. NASA then took notes on how well the applicants worked together in stressful circumstances.
There were individual tasks, too. Perhaps an applicant was given a situation similar to what could occur in space — taking orders from Mission Control and then having to perform a certain task.
Hathaway said this was his first job interview to be done in teams, and it was the best part of the experience. Even if he was going into an interview alone, the other applicants were there providing support.
“We were talking each other up, we were prepping each other, getting ready to answer the questions,” he said. “When you walked out of the interview, those people were standing right there. And they were clapping you on the back, and they were excited for you.”
Burnham enjoyed meeting people from all walks of life, and she hopes the applicants who weren’t selected keep applying. This was her third application to be a NASA astronaut and Hathaway’s second.
“Hopefully everybody keeps up that optimism and reapplies,” she said. “This is what it takes. This was not my first application. This was kind of a lifetime of effort.”
Burnham’s love for space began as a child looking at Mars and the rings of Saturn through her grandfather’s telescope. And her experience living on and managing the operation of drilling rigs prepared her for working on a spaceship or space station. Both are remote, fast-paced operational environments that require teamwork, collaboration and living in confined spaces.
So when she saw the Houston area code on her phone, Burnham answered the call and held her breath. It was Reid Wiseman, chief of the Astronaut Office.
“He asked, ‘Hey are you still interested?’ ” Burnham recalled. “I was instantly in tears. I tried to keep it together, but I couldn’t. I had wanted this since I was a little girl.”
She got to share the moment with her mom, and she used FaceTime to call her 94-year-old grandfather.
Hathaway, who has more than 2,500 flight hours in 30 types of aircraft, saw the email and rushed to call Wiseman. When he finally got a phone call to go through, Hathaway could only hear clapping and cheering — Wiseman was at a high school football game. And after Wiseman got free of the crowds, Hathaway had to contend with jets landing 7 feet above him.
“He’s like, ‘Man, this is the most awkward phone call I’ve ever made to offer someone the job to become a NASA astronaut candidate,’ ” Hathaway recalled Wiseman saying.
Still, it was a special moment to share with his squadron mates on board the USS Truman; his second family.
The astronaut candidates will report for duty at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in January to begin two years of training.