Four currently serving officers and three former officers have been chosen as part of the 10-member astronaut candidate class of 2025, NASA announced Sept. 22.

Selectees made the grade ahead of more than 8,000 fellow applicants. They will undertake two years of training before joining the astronaut ranks. Among the future space travelers:

• Chief Warrant Officer 3 Ben Bailey, USA, an Army helicopter test pilot who graduated from the Navy’s test pilot school in 2022 and was a nuclear engineer before his time in uniform.
  
  
• Maj. Adam Furhmann, USAF, who has racked up more than 2,100 flight hours (including 400 combat hours) in 27 different aircraft and holds advanced engineering degrees from the Air Force Test Pilot School and Purdue University.
  
  
• Maj. Cameron Jones, USAF, a test pilot with more than 1,600 flight hours in more than 30 aircraft, including 150 combat hours.
  
  
• Cmdr. Erin Overcash, USN, who has made 249 carrier-arrested landings as a Navy pilot and also trained with the USA Rugby women’s national team as part of the Navy’s World Class Athlete Program.
  
  
• Rebecca “Becky” Lawler, a former Navy lieutenant commander who recently served as a test pilot with United Airlines. Lawler transferred to the NOAA Commissioned Officer Corps in 2020, serving at the same rank and flying more than 30 “hurricane eyewall penetrations,” according to her NASA bio.
  
  
• Dr. Imelda Muller, a former Navy lieutenant who served as an undersea medical officer and provided medical support as part of Navy diver training at NASA’s Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory.
  
  
• Katherine Spies, a former Marine Corps captain who served as an attack helicopter pilot and test pilot and compiled more than 2,000 flight hours in more than 30 aircraft. Spies recently was director of flight test engineering at Gulfstream Aerospace Corp.

[FROM 2020: Some of NASA’s Newest Astronauts Are Military Officers. And They May Be Heading to Mars]

The officer contingent joins geologist Lauren Edgar and engineers Yuri Kubo and Anna Menon to make up the 2025 class, which will “usher in the Golden Age of innovation and exploration as we push toward the moon and Mars,” Vanessa Wyche, director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, said in the announcement.

Only 24 astronaut classes, with 370 combined members, have been chosen since 1959. The last class, selected in 2021, included two MOAA members among its 10 selectees.

Learn more about the 2025 astronaut candidates on the NASA website.