How to Become an Astronaut

Almost everyone has the thought at least once, usually as a kid, usually with their neck craned back: I want to go up there. For about sixty years there was exactly one way to act on it, and it was one of the hardest jobs on Earth to get. That path is still real, and this guide lays out precisely what NASA asks for. But it is no longer the only way up, and for most people it was never the realistic one, so “how do I become an astronaut” really has two answers. We will give you both.

What NASA actually requires

The basic bar is shorter than the mythology around it. Every item here is straight off NASA’s own astronaut-requirements page:

• Be a U.S. citizen. No exceptions, and no, you cannot buy an exemption.
• Hold a master’s degree in a STEM field from an accredited school. A few things count in its place: two years of work toward a related doctorate, a completed MD or DO, or completion of (or current enrollment in) a nationally recognized test-pilot school.
• Have the experience. Either at least two years of related professional work after the degree, or at least 1,000 hours of pilot-in-command time in jet aircraft.
• Pass the long-duration spaceflight physical. People assume this gate is about raw athleticism. It is really about whether your body will hold up to months in orbit, and NASA retired the old Mercury-era height limit long ago.

Read that list again and notice what is not on it: no minimum IQ, no military service, no perfect eyesight, no particular age. The requirements are a floor, not the contest.

The competition is the hard part

Meeting the bar is the easy half. NASA’s 2017 class was chosen from more than 18,300 applications, and a group that finally gets picked is usually about a dozen people. Those are longer odds than almost any school or job you can name. The people who clear them tend to have stacked several of the pathways at once (a doctorate and a pilot’s license, say, on top of a standout research or operational record), and most of them applied more than once before it landed.

The two years after you’re picked

Get the call and you are an astronaut candidate, not yet an astronaut. Candidates spend about two years training at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston before they are eligible for a flight assignment. The core of it, in NASA’s own description of the program:

• Spacewalking. The rehearsals happen underwater, in the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory (a 6.2-million-gallon pool holding a full-size mockup of the station), where a suited candidate works through every task in simulated weightlessness.
• Running the space station and its systems.
• Robotics, including flying the station’s robotic arm.
• Flying T-38 jets, which keeps candidates sharp at making fast, high-stakes decisions in a real and unforgiving vehicle.

Crews headed for the International Space Station also learn Russian, because the station and the Soyuz spacecraft that has long ferried crews both run on it. Only after all of that does a candidate graduate, and then the wait begins, sometimes years, for an actual seat.

The newer path: private and commercial astronauts

The monopoly one government once held is gone. Companies now fly their own people, and other countries fly theirs. Axiom Space arranges and trains crews for privately funded orbital missions to the ISS, pairing former national-agency astronauts as commanders with first-time private fliers. If you are not American, your route is your own agency (ESA in Europe, the CSA in Canada, JAXA in Japan), each running its own selection round, each as fierce as NASA’s. The title is no longer something only one country hands out.

Or skip the career entirely

Here is the part the career guides leave out: you do not have to become an astronaut to go to space. Since 2001, private citizens have simply bought the seat. A suborbital flight with Blue Origin or Virgin Galactic today takes a few days of preparation rather than a few years of training, and the medical bar is closer to “can climb a flight of stairs and tolerate a few seconds of g-force” than to NASA’s flight physical. It costs money instead of a decade, which for a lot of people is the more reachable currency.

If that is the version of the dream you are really after, start with our eligibility checker to see which tier you could book today, read the cost guide for what each one runs, and use how to prepare once you have a seat. For a kid or teen who wants the career and not just the view, Space Camp is where that fire usually gets lit.