Tri-Cities astronaut a step closer to being 1st woman on the moon. NASA names its team
A Richland astronaut is getting the chance to make a giant leap for women, and land on the moon.
Kayla Barron was one of 18 astronauts named Thursday to NASA’s “Artemis Team” to train on hardware that will be used for future missions to the moon.
She is one of nine women named to the team — two from Washington state. The other is Spokane native Anne McClain who has served six months aboard the International Space Station and done two spacewalks.
Barron was named to the astronaut corps in 2017. While she hasn’t been in space yet, she’s trained in simulated spacewalks, learned to fly a T-38 jet and is one of just 50 astronauts in the U.S.
She was picked to start training out of a record-setting pool of more than 18,000 applicants.
While the moon was on Barron’s wish list when she talked to the Herald earlier this year, the announcement today makes it official.
“It is what got me excited about being an astronaut in the first place,” she told the Herald in January.
The most important result of space exploration for Barron is what it inspires, she said in a video produced by NASA.
“I think we all have this innate sense to explore, whether you’re the one that gets to step on the moon or not,” she said in the video. “I think it changes all of us to know we can actually do things that would be unimaginable to the generations that came before us.”
But it’s likely to be several more years before the first lunar-related mission, according to GeekWire. The first-crewed Artemis mission is scheduled for 2023, when astronauts will fly by before looping back to Earth.
NASA plans to send the Artemis crew to the moon’s south polar region in 2024. By the late 2020s, they plan to have a base camp with people living on the moon.
While Barron is part of the first class, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said more astronauts may join, including from space programs from other nations.
“We made clear in our first year that the moon is not a final destination,” Vice President Mike Pence said during the ceremony. “We’re going back to the moon, and then we’re going to Mars and beyond.”
Barron, whose parents are Scott and Lauri Sax, graduated from the Naval Academy and serves as a Navy lieutenant. In her time with the Navy, she worked on submarines.
She compared her experience serving three patrols on the USS Maine to how NASA operates. Space flights require people to operate complicated equipment, communicate well with team members and make decisions based on information from specialists.
“We are sending human beings to places that (they) are not really supposed to be living and keeping them alive so they can thrive and accomplish goal missions,” she told the Herald in January.
Along with her other training, Barron earned a master’s degree in nuclear engineering at the University of Cambridge.
This story was originally published December 10, 2020 at 12:59 PM.