https://www.wired.com/2016/11/nasa-will-choose-first-mars-faring-astronauts/
CHRISTINE CORBETT MORAN was in Antarctica when she got the news: NASA wanted to interview her, in person, for the next class of astronauts.
Moran is a coder and theoretical astrophysicist, and she’d been holed up in the southernmost part of the world for 10 months, studying the
echoes of the Big Bang. She was scheduled to leave the coldest continent in November anyway, so four days after NASA rang, on October 18,
she booked the five flights necessary to get to Houston and sell her qualifications to space-agency officials.
Moran—who has worked in propulsion at SpaceX , co-led creation of the iOS version of the encrypted communication app Signal, and minored in
philosophy—probably wouldn’t have been as attractive an astronaut candidate historically as she is today. But NASA’s missions have evolved.
When the agency put out its latest application call, it specified that the lucky few might fly in Orion, a deep-space vessel meant to make
the #journeytomars. And that kind of long, tight, potentially science-centric job lends itself to a different resume than astronaut calls
past. Say, someone who knows science and software and can stay sane at the South Pole.
