How to Become an Astronaut

今日の英語の習慣化の題材は...

久々振りにAstronautにどうしたらいいかなれるのか？ って言うお話です。

実際日本、米国市民しか応募の権利はありませんが、この様にすれば候補に志願できるんですよ、と言う英語のお勉強です。

週末の数分、英語で読んでみてくださいね！

The hopeful, heroic people you see above are the crew of NASA’s Artemis II mission. NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen will fly by the moon in November 2024. Artemis III, planned for 2025, will actually land on the moon, and Americans will once again play golf on the lunar surface.

Sadly, it’s too late for you to get onboard these current moon missions, but many space experts estimate NASA will be flying people to Mars by the 2030s, which should give you plenty of time to secure your spot on the first manned interplanetary flight.

I’m not going to sugarcoat it: The odds of anyone becoming an astronaut are slim. So far, only 600 humans have been to space over the course of human history (not counting astronauts in any secret space programs, of course). NASA isn’t having trouble finding people who want to join that elite 600 either. In 2021, more than 12,000 people applied for astronaut training. NASA accepted 10 of them, and they only inducted new classes of astronauts every four years or so. But don’t let the long odds deter you; you’re as good as any of them, and you miss every shot you don’t take.

The basic-basics of becoming an astronaut
The minimum basic requirements to become a NASA astronaut are as follows. You must:

Be a U.S. citizen.
Possess a master’s degree* in a STEM field, including engineering, biological science, physical science, computer science or mathematics, from an accredited institution.
Have at least two years of related professional experience obtained after degree completion or at least 1,000 hours pilot-in-command time on jet aircraft.
Be able to pass the NASA long-duration flight astronaut physical. This means having 20/20 vision without glasses of contacts (LASIK surgery is acceptable, as long as it was done more than a year previously.) It also means meeting the “anthropometric requirements for both the spacecraft and the spacesuit.” Back in the old days of the Apollo missions, that meant being less than 5-feet, 11 inches tall, but these days there’s no specific requirements publicized.