Geophysicist to Astronaut

Last week I gave a presentation to ninth graders in Lovington, NM. It dealt with my scientific career and astronaut ambitions. Hopefully I showed the kids that science is fun and a great way to see the world. They are lucky to be in New Mexico, which is fast-becoming a hub of the commercial spaceflight revolution.

Geophysicist to Astronaut
View more presentations from Brian Shiro.


This was the second time I've given a presentation of this kind remotely via Skype; the first was to my high school last year. I've had a busy year with my FMARS and MDRS missions, founding of A4H, and near-completion of the UND Space Studies degree (more on that in the next post).


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

New CSA, ESA, and JAXA Astronauts

Mark your calendars for May 13 and 20. That's when Canada's CSA and Europe's ESA will announce their new astronaut selections. In a press release earlier today, CSA said it would announce its two new astronauts on May 13. Back in March, I reported that CSA released a great deal of information on the top 16 astronaut candidates in its recruitment campaign. This included biographies of the top 16 candidates and video and photos of their evaluation and testing. CSA has been very good with keeping the public informed through the astronaut selection process with regular posts to its website . I liked how CSA was able to interview a relatively large pool of applicants remotely via teleconference, which is something NASA did not do. As I reported in a previous post , CSA had 5352 applicants for only 2 slots. This makes CSA's selectivity 2/5352 = 0.037%! May 13 Update: CSA has announced its two newest astronauts David Saint-Jacques and Jeremy Hansen . Congrat
READ MORE >>

Insider tips on NASA's astronaut selection

Image
While NASA wraps up interviewing the second group of finalists to determine its 2013 class of ASCANs, the head of the NASA Astronaut Selection Office Duane Ross gave an illuminating presentation at JSC last Thursday about the selection process.  He covered questions ranging from academic degrees to interview questions, medical screening, and Russian language requirements. Pete Dimmick was among those present in the audience. Here are his notes from the event, reprinted with permission: Today I attended a lecture by Duane Ross and his protege, Anne Roemer. Duane has been the head of the astronaut selection process for 37 years and I had a few minutes to speak with them after the lecture was over. Here is what I found out about becoming an astronaut. I won't discuss so much the published requirements, rather I'll be focusing more on the insider things. There have been 257 NASA astronauts over the years and an applicant has a 0.6% chance of being selected. Of those no
READ MORE >>

The Astronaut Hopeful's Manifesto

Image
I am an astronaut hopeful – one of thousands of people who somehow never outgrew our childhood dream of going to space. Anyone can hope to be an astronaut, but to be an “astronaut hopeful” one must make a commitment to the goal and proactively work towards becoming an astronaut. The road is long and the outcome is uncertain, but it is in trying to achieve this lofty ambition that we learn to become our best selves. Astronauts train to be some of the most focused, resourceful, healthy and dependable people on the planet. Striving to be more like them can help any person to be more effective in life’s pursuits. Making the decision to do everything one can to actually become an astronaut means learning from astronaut role models and making incremental decisions throughout your life that get you closer to your dream. This week NASA began accepting applications to recruit another class of astronaut candidates (ASCAN’s). More than 6,300 people applied during the last opportunity, from
READ MORE >>