By KATIE HILER, New York Times – One flies a fighter jet for the Marines. Another is an assistant professor of anesthesiology at Harvard Medical School. A third is a helicopter pilot for the Army. And the fourth leads the station in American Samoa of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.

They are the four women in NASA’s latest class of astronaut trainees, which also includes four men. The eight recruits — the first NASA has named in four years, and the first group to include equal numbers of men and women — were selected from 6,300 applicants and will start training at the Johnson Space Center in Houston in August, the space agency said Monday.

If all goes well after a few years of training, one or more might be selected for a stint at the International Space Station, or — eventually — for a trip to an asteroid or Mars, places that NASA eventually hopes to visit.

“It’s just so surreal that this moment has arrived,” said Anne C. McClain, 34, the helicopter pilot, who is from Spokane, Wash., and graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point. “I truly don’t remember ever wanting to be something else.”

She and the other recruits spoke in prerecorded video introductions that NASA shared as part of an online video conference. The agency did not make the trainees available for interviews.

NASA said that the new class, the agency’s 21st, was the smallest group to date, chosen after a year-and-a-half search from the largest applicant pool since 1978. Only 120 applicants were invited to come to the Johnson Space Center, where they underwent initial medical evaluations and an hour interview with the selection board. Forty-nine candidates were invited back for a second round of interviews as well as language aptitude tests, psychological evaluations and mechanical skills assessments.

via NASA’s New Class of Astronauts Gives Parity to Men and Women – NYTimes.com.