NASA's hiring: New astronaut class will help build a moon base

NASA wants more astronauts, and it wants them now. The space agency announced Saturday at a Kennedy Space Center air show that it's taking applications for a new astronaut class to help grow the Artemis program, with a Dec. 3 deadline to get in the pile. The last call, two years ago, drew more than 8,000 hopefuls. Only 10 made the cut in September 2025.

That thin haul explains the urgency: NASA currently has just 32 active astronauts. Artemis III commander Randy Bresnik didn't sugarcoat it. “We have far more work than we have astronauts,” he told the AP on Saturday.

There's a long runway ahead for anyone who applies. NASA expects to name its final picks by late 2027, with training kicking off by early 2028 — the same year the agency plans to put astronauts back on the lunar surface after more than half a century away. Bresnik's pitch to fence-sitters: by then “we're going to have people on the moon — so don't delay.”

The moon work is already ramping up. Bresnik and his three crewmates launch next summer to practice docking their capsule with a pair of lunar landers — one from Elon Musk's SpaceX, one from Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin. That flight stays near Earth with no lunar flyby, serving as a dress rehearsal for Artemis IV, which will try to land two astronauts near the lunar south pole the following year. The Artemis II crew's lunar flyaround in April kicked off the whole campaign.

Applicants must be U.S. citizens with college degrees and professional work experience, and the two mandatory years of training can be brutal. Even then, reaching orbit can take several more years. Artemis III's Frank Rubio — whose 371 consecutive days in space is a U.S. endurance record — wants candidates clear-eyed about that. “It's important for them to realize most of that work is not going to the moon,” he told the AP. “That will be about 1% of your experience. What you're doing is contributing to the mission of going to the moon.”

The base itself will come together piece by piece as rovers, robots, structures and power grids get launched to the surface. And this is no niche club: it'll be NASA's 25th astronaut class since the original Mercury Seven in 1959.