NASA’s new astronaut class includes SpaceX veterans Anna Menon and Yuri Kubo

SpaceX is proud of an impressive former list. Some have found the biggest startups of this sector; Others become innovators.

NASA unveiled his 2025 novelist class this week and popped out two familiar names: Anna Menon and Yuri Kubo. Both spent more than a decade in SpaceX, where they today played a critical role in the rise of this company with Behramoth.

Menon joined SpaceX in 2018 after his career at the Mission Control Center, where he provided biomedical support to the innovators. As a senior engineer in SpaceX, he worked on a private innovator mission and flew as a mission expert and medical officer on the Polaris Don Private Novocary Mission. This mission broke several records, including the first commercial spacewalk editing.

Kubo, already, spent 12 years in SpaceX as a 9 -launch director and a senior role to oversee the Starshield programs and ground systems.

These 10 novels were chosen out of more than 8,000 applicants. Training Strict: The group will spend about two years to learn the ropes before being eligible for an international space station and beyond assignment. The training curriculum includes Robotics, Geology, Foreign Language, Astronomical Drugs and more and more in addition to simulated spacewalk and flight training, NASA said.

If they pass the training, the group will join more than 5 active innovators and helps to transfer NASA to commercial private space stations after ISS retirement in the 21st. This group will also be eligible for future science missions on the moon and Mars.

This is the first time the SpaceX alumni have jumped the public innovator corps. Rob Kulin NASA, a former director of SpaceX’s flight reliability, joined the 2017 class as a candidate. In 2021, SpaceX’s first flight surgeon and medical director – Anil Menon was selected from the Artemis generation of the innovators. (Anil and Anna are married.)

This trend refers to how the world’s most influential private space agency is involved in increasing astronaut work – not only supports private missions like the Polaris program, but also produces themselves innovators.

For decades, NASA innovators mostly came from military and academia. The commercial sector played very little role in producing innovative candidates. However SpaceX has changed it. The company has become a training area for engineers and mission operators working in Human Spaceflight.