Indian-American among 12 new astronauts chosen by NASA

Houston, June 8 : NASA has chosen 12 new astronauts, including an Indian-American, from a record number of over 18,000 applicants, who will be trained for missions into Earth orbit and to deep space.
The seven men and five women comprise the 22nd class of American spaceflight trainees since 1959. This is the largest group NASA has selected in almost two decades.
It was selected from a record 18,300 applicants — more than NASA has ever had during an open astronaut call.
To get picked, people had to meet some physical requirements as well as certain education and experience criteria — such as having a bachelor’s degree in a STEM field or accumulating up to 1,000 hours of piloting jets.But it’s clear that this new class greatly surpasses all the minimum skills that NASA requires.
After completing two years of training, the new astronaut candidates could be assigned to missions performing research on the International Space Station, launching from American soil on spacecraft built by commercial companies, and flying on deep space missions on NASA’s new Orion spacecraft and Space Launch System rocket. Vice President Mike Pence joined NASA leaders, including acting administrator Robert Lightfoot and director of flight operations Brian Kelly, in Houston, Texas to announce the new astronaut candidates, or “ascans”. The event was set inside the Johnson Space Center’s Space Vehicle Mockup Facility in front of a full-scale engineering model of NASA’s Orion spacecraft, which the new astronauts might fly in the coming years on missions beyond low Earth orbit.