Astronaut candidates have local ties
Zena Cardman has never mixed or sipped Tang, the powdered orange drink that’s twice her age and accompanied earlier generations of astronauts into space.
But the 29-year-old, a geoscientist working on her doctorate at Penn State University’s College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, is following in their footsteps as one of 12 new astronaut candidates selected by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
Joining her in the select dozen is Warren “Woody” Hoburg, 31, an assistant professor of aeronautics and astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who graduated from North Allegheny High School. His parents now live in New Hampshire.
Their selection, which ended an application process that began in December 2015, was announced Wednesday at the Johnson Space Center in Houston in a ceremony
attended by Vice President Mike Pence.
The astronaut candidates — seven men and five women — are the first new class since 2013. They were picked from 18,000 applicants, a pool that doubled the previous applicant record, set in 1978, NASA officials said.
Beginning in August, they will train for two years in Houston and, if successful, qualify as an astronaut and become eligible for spaceflight.
“I’ll find out where I’m going [in space] when the rest of the world finds out. It’s totally open-ended, but exciting not to know,” said Ms. Cardman, whose training will include upgrading her flying skills from gliders and small planes to piloting a T-38 military jet trainer and learning the Russian language, robotics and spacewalking skills. “There’s a lot to learn.”
Mr. Hoburg said his path to becoming an astronaut began at age 15, when he started tinkering with model rockets. That hobby launched his interest in engineering and led him to where he is today, at MIT, where he teaches undergraduate-level dynamics and flight vehicle engineering and conducts research on efficient methods of design for engineering systems.
“Being an astronaut someday has always been in the back of my mind,” he said, giving credit to teachers at North Allegheny, from which he graduated in 2004, and especially his Advanced Placement calculus teacher, Sharon Volpe.
Ms. Volpe, of McCandless, said Mr. Hoburg was one of the best students she has ever had. “He is amazing,” she said. “Every class I get, I want a Woody Hoburg in it.”
Ms. Cardman is from Williamsburg, Va., When she was growing up, she said her mother took her outside at night to watch meteor showers, which gave her “a sense of awe about the universe.” But she didn’t aspire to be an astronaut until she was in college.
“I was inspired to become a biologist by my high school teacher and found lots of inspiration from mentors and colleagues along the way in the field work I did with lots of different groups in Antarctica and other remote places,” said Ms. Cardman, whose research has focused on microorganisms in subsurface environments such as caves and deep sea sediments. “We can draw analogies between those environments and early Earth. And that can help us know what to look for beyond Earth.”
Ms. Cardman said her favorite space movie is “Apollo 13” — she was watching it with friends, “trying not to stress out,” when NASA called to give her the good news about her selection. She also likes “The Martian” and the “Alien” movies.
Asked whether she believes life exists elsewhere in the heavens, she said, “I have no idea if there is life elsewhere, let alone intelligent life. It would be profound to find other life in the universe, but just as profound to find that we are alone.”
Four other Penn Staters have preceded Ms. Cardman into space: Paul Weitz; Robert Cenker; Guion S. Bluford Jr., the first African-American astronaut; and current associate professor of kinesiology James Pawelczyk.