For the first time, NASA’s astronaut candidate class is made up of mostly women and includes someone who has already been to orbit, as the space agency focuses on its goals to send humans back to the Moon and on to Mars.
NASA announced the 2025 class of American astronaut candidates in Houston on Monday, revealing the names and impressive skill sets of 10 individuals.
Since 2013, all NASA astronaut classes have been half men and women. With this class, more than half of the candidates are women. This includes Anna Menon, 39, a Houston native and a member of the SpaceX Polaris Dawn crew. NASA confirmed she is the first astronaut candidate who has already been to orbit.
In 2024, Menon was a mission specialist and medical officer on Polaris Dawn. The mission launched by SpaceX, and commanded by American businessman Jared Isaacman, holds several spaceflight records, including the first commercial spacewalk. During the flight, Menon and her crewmate, Sarah Gillis, set a new altitude record for women.
The Polaris Dawn mission achieved another historic milestone, flying in an orbit nearly 870 miles above Earth, marking the farthest humans have been from Earth since Apollo 17.
Menon’s husband, Dr. Anil Menon, was selected to be a NASA astronaut in 2021.
NASA said more than 8,000 people applied from a variety of backgrounds.
Many of the candidates come from military backgrounds. Some, such as Lauren Edgar, 40, have already been contributing to NASA’s Artemis Moon program and other NASA missions.
Edgar has served as the deputy principal investigator for the Artemis III Geology Team, helping to define the lunar science goals for the first astronauts to go back to the Moon in more than 50 years. She was working at the U.S. Geological Survey when she was selected.
Candidate Yuri Kuno, 40, worked for SpaceX for over a decade, and prior to that, contributed to NASA’s Orion spacecraft, the International Space Station and the space shuttle.
U.S. Army Chief Warrant Officer Ben Bailey, 38, is a test pilot with experience on 30 different rotary and fixed-wind aircraft. He was testing emerging technologies for the Army rotary wing aircraft at the time of his selection.
U.S. Air Force Maj. Adam Fuhrmann, 35, has logged more than 400 combat hours and was the director of operations of an Air Force flight test unit when NASA selected him for astronaut training.
U.S. Air Force Maj. Cameron Jones, 35, is an experienced test pilot with 150 combat hours across different aircraft. When he was selected by NASA, he was an Air Force Academic Fellow at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
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Rebecca Lawler, 38, is a former Navy P-3 pilot and test pilot with more than 2,800 flight hours. Lawler contributed to NOAA and NASA weather and climate missions, including flying on hurricane hunter flights for NOAA and NASA’s Operation IceBridge.
Imelda Muller, 34, a former lieutenant in the U.S. Navy, provided medical support at NASA’s Buoyancy Laboratory and was completing a residency in anesthesia at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine when she was selected by NASA.
A U.S. Navy test pilot, Erin Overcash, 34, has logged more than 1,300 flight hours across 20 aircraft. Overcash trained with the USA Rugby Women’s National Team as part of the Navy’s World Class Athlete Program.
Former Marine Corps AH-1 attack helicopter pilot Katherine Spies, 43, was the director of flight test engineering at Gulfstream Aerospace Corp. when she was selected for the 2025 astronaut class.
The 24th astronaut class has already begun training at NASA’s Johnson Space Center.