SpaceX boasts a formidable alumni listing. Some have gone on to discovered the sector’s greatest startups; others grow to be astronauts.

NASA unveiled its 2025 astronaut class this week, and two acquainted names popped out: Anna Menon and Yuri Kubo. Each spent greater than a decade at SpaceX, the place they performed important roles within the firm’s rise to the behemoth it’s immediately.

Menon joined SpaceX in 2018 after a profession at NASA within the Mission Management Middle, the place she offered biomedical assist for astronauts. As a senior engineer at SpaceX, she labored on personal astronaut missions and flew as a mission specialist and medical officer aboard the Polaris Daybreak personal astronaut mission. That mission broke a number of data, together with performing the primary industrial spacewalk.  

Kubo, in the meantime, spent 12 years at SpaceX as a Falcon 9 launch director and in senior roles overseeing the Starshield program and floor methods.  

These 10 astronauts had been chosen out of greater than 8,000 candidates. Coaching is rigorous: The group will spend almost two years studying the ropes earlier than changing into eligible for assignments on the Worldwide House Station and past. The coaching curriculum contains classes in robotics, geology, overseas languages, area medication, and extra, alongside conducting simulated spacewalks and flight coaching, NASA stated.

In the event that they cross coaching, this group will be a part of the group of over 40 energetic astronauts, and could also be a part of the cohort that helps NASA transition to industrial personal area stations upon the retirement of the ISS in 2030. This group may even be eligible for future science missions to the moon and Mars.

This isn’t the primary time SpaceX alumni have made the leap to authorities astronaut corps. Robb Kulin, former director of flight reliability at SpaceX, joined NASA’s 2017 class as a candidate. In 2021, Anil Menon — SpaceX’s first flight surgeon and medical director — was elected to be a part of the Artemis technology of astronauts. (Anil and Anna are married.)

The development underscores how the world’s most influential personal area firm is more and more intertwined with bona fide astronaut work — not solely supporting personal missions just like the Polaris program, but in addition producing astronauts themselves.  

For many years, NASA astronauts principally got here from the army and academia. The industrial sector performed little function in producing astronaut candidates. However SpaceX has modified that. The corporate has grow to be a coaching floor for engineers and mission operators engaged on human spaceflight.