MCAS Yuma pilot is astronaut candidate
Exploring space was childhood dream for Jasmin Moghbeli
Maj. Jasmin Moghbeli, a helicopter test pilot based at Marine Corps Air Station Yuma, stepped into the national limelight this week and toward a future of discovery, as one of NASA’s astronaut candidates for 2017.
Moghbeli said Thursday this feels like the ideal time to get into this most rarefied of fields, with the potential for missions on the Orion spacecraft currently being tested at Yuma Proving Ground, to the International Space Station or on commercially developed space vehicles.
“In terms of the kid, adventurous side of me I kind of relate it to the class where I hear about the explorers crossing the ocean to travel to different continents. This is the currentday version of that. We’re exploring deeper and deeper into space, and it’s an exciting time for that with so many things on the horizon,” she said.
On Wednesday she was one of a dozen astronaut candidates announced by NASA at Houston’s Johnson Space Center — featuring Vice President Mike Pence — the cream of the crop out of a record 18,300 applicants. This is the largest group of candidates accepted into the program at once since 2000.
Moghbeli spoke by telephone on Thursday from Houston, where she will be staying a few more days to begin looking for places to live once her
two years of training begins in August. Spacewalking and speaking Russian (for communicating with crew on the International Space Station) will be among the many subjects covered.
Once she completes the training she will be a NASA employee, working on land as well as space.
“At that point we’ll all be open to assignments, we’ll all be given a technical duty and that’s basically your job while you’re back here on Earth, and I think you rotate through them over time, until a mission comes up and you’re assigned for it. There’s plenty to be done here on Earth, prior to getting to go into space,” she said.
Moghbeli, 33, grew up on Long Island, N.Y., and said that, yes, she is one of those kids who used to dream about becoming an astronaut.
“I would like to thank all my friends and family, and teachers and coaches who helped get me here, especially my parents and my brother,” she said.
“It’s definitely been a life-long goal. I’d say it’s taken shape over time and maybe changed its form a little bit, but since elementary school,” she said. When I was in sixth grade I did a book report on Valentina Tereshkova (the first woman to have flown in space), and we got to dress up as whoever we did the book report on, so my mom helped me build a little spacesuit that I wore into school that day.
“Between that and I always enjoyed math and science while growing up, and I was kind of adventurous, so I think those things combined, and made me want to become an astronaut. As I got older, into junior high and early high school I started looking into, what do I need to do to become an astronaut?”
She earned a bachelor’s in aerospace engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, then a master’s from the Naval Postgraduate School, before joining the Marines.
“Before I started my flight training I was lucky enough to go down and see a shuttle launch, so I saw that crew of seven launch up on that mission. And Suni Williams was on that flight, and she’s a Navy helicopter pilot. And I was kind of debating at that time, I wanted to be a Cobra (attack helicopter) pilot, but I thought you had to be a jet pilot to become an astronaut, and when I found out she was a helicopter pilot, I said, ‘OK, I’m going to try for Cobras, and sure enough, I was lucky enough to get it.”
A distinguished graduate of the U.S. Naval Test Pilot Training Program, Moghbeli said her ultimate goal had to take a back seat for a while, but never left her entirely.
“When I was a Cobra pilot flying in Afghanistan, I don’t think I was even thinking about becoming an astronaut. It was something that was stuck to the back of my mind. But after I finished my three deployments, I started thinking about it again, and that’s when I ended up getting accepted for Naval test pilot school,” she said, of which she is a distinguished graduate.
She has been awarded four Air Medals, the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal, three Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medals and various unit commendations.
At MCAS Yuma she is currently the quality assurance and avionics officer for Marine Operational Test and Evaluation Squadron 1, where she is among the last testers of helicopters bound for combat. She’s been there just under two years and has enjoyed water sports, playing basketball and hanging out with two friends from her last duty station, who arrived at the same time.
Moghbeli said she’s just starting to get to know her diverse classmates in NASA’s Class of 2017, which has five women and seven men. They include an engineer for SpaceX, a geologist with the Mars rover laboratory, two physicians and a flight test commander from Edwards Air Force Base in California.
She expects they’ll be part of her life for years to come, during her life as an astronaut. “I think I’ll be doing this for quite a while,” she said.