Naval Academy degrees hope to walk on the moon with NASA team

ANNAPOLIS, MD – Some kids want to be astronauts when they grow up. Not Kayla Barron.

She wanted to become a naval officer, so that’s what she did. After graduating from the Naval Academy in 2010 with a master’s degree in nuclear engineering, Barron, 33, became a submarine war officer and was deployed to the Pacific three times. She then returned to Annapolis to serve as a flag assistant, who is a personal assistant to a high-ranking official, with the former superintendent vice-adm. Walter Carter.

If it were not for that job, Barron might not have become one of the two Naval Academy graduates and former athletes selected for the Artemis team, which will ‘lead humanity to the moon and prepare us for the next giant leap, the exploration of Mars, ”says NASA. The mission, announced under the Trump administration, will be NASA’s first trip to the lunar surface in half a century, and the goal is to land the next man and first woman there by 2024, although experts claim that the timeline can stretch much longer.

Barron and former Navy soccer player Nicole Mann, 43, are the fifth and sixth graduates of Naval Academy to visit the moon and the first since 1972.

When Barron applied to become a NASA astronaut, she thought she was sending her name to the void. But as one of the first women to be appointed in the submarine community, it is not as if she is incapable of reaching new heights.

But becoming an astronaut was not something she would have considered if she had not walked into elite circles as the superintendent’s flag assistant. It was there that the former orbit and land runner met Naval Academy graduate and NASA astronaut Kay Hire, who told her about the construction of the early space station and all the engineering involved.

“The more I listened to her story, the more it sounded like living and working on a submarine,” Barron said. ‘If you work and work in the air, the same things can kill you, you need the same things to keep you alive. And most importantly, you need the same kind of team to accomplish a mission. ”

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So Barron applied and waited.

Years earlier, Mann felt a similar way. After commissioning in 1999, the Marine Corps lieutenant colonel earned a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from Stanford and recorded 2,500 flying hours on 25 aircraft and 47 combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But when NASA opened applications, Mann thought it would be too crazy. Her husband, Travis, convinced her that it would be crazy not to try.

During the one-and-a-half-year interview process that involved a series of trips to Houston, Mann thought, “Holy cow, they will not choose me.”

‘Before, (it was like)’ This is a great opportunity, I’ll never have to let it go. “Then after that second interview, you would have a feeling, ‘OK, this is where I feel I belong,'” Mann said.

She did belong, and in 2013 NASA chose her. Barron signed up for spaceflight in 2017.

On December 9, NASA announced that they were among 18 astronauts selected to become the Artemis team.

In some ways they still do their former military work, but with an astronomical flair. They study how to live and work in space and the mechanics of the International Space Station and spacecraft. They dress up spaces, dive into a pool and “space walk” underwater in a scale model of the space station for more than six hours.

“I still have the same fundamental sense of fulfillment that I am serving our country and working on something for all of humanity that is so much greater than (me),” Mann said. “… It’s the driving force deep in your heart that really makes you move forward.”

All of Artemis’ beginners hope that they will be selected before the big one before a space mission, Barron said. She still does not know if she will be one of them.

Mann, on the other hand, is now preparing for one. She is planning for the first crew test on Starliner, a Boeing capsule that plans to travel to the International Space Station later this year.

Both women know within a few years that they can walk on the moon, a place that men have only trodden before.

They may have to wait longer than a few years, as President Biden’s administration and NASA still have to overcome numerous logistical barriers that are likely to slow down the process. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine retired on January 20 and a new administrator has not been nominated under President Biden.

Yet Barron said all the astronauts are pinching themselves every morning in their coming future.

Although men like Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong who walked the moon are legendary individuals, Barron said spaceflight is a team sport. It brings together different types of experts to contribute to a common goal.

She sees the mission to the moon as another opportunity to contribute to the greater purpose of mankind.

“You look up at the moon at night and imagine you are standing there looking back at the earth – it’s blowing your kind,” Barron said. “… It’s super inspiring and I think it’s something that motivates me to do everything I can to contribute to the team that’s going to do it, whether I’m the one standing on the moon or one of my friends on the moon looking back at us. ”

Mann sees her 8-year-old son talking to his friends about his mother and the excitement in the eyes of children as she goes to schools as a speaker. She sees the gears turning in their heads and devises plans to become astronauts, doctors, engineers, writers. It puts things in perspective.

“I think and I really hope and believe that it will help tremendously to unite people, not only in the United States, but also people around the world,” Mann said, “because it is truly an international effort. I feel that it will unite people in that common goal and that common effort. ”