Astronaut in 1981: The Shuttle opens the corps

Through a national or commercial selection, entered from another career. NASA requires a STEM master's degree (or a medical degree, test-pilot school, or doctoral work) plus professional experience or 1,000 hours piloting jets; ESA, JAXA, Canada and China run comparable competitions. Survivors of medical, psychological and interview rounds then complete roughly two years of basic training before becoming eligible for a flight assignment.

Far less than the fame suggests. NASA astronauts are civil servants: the 2024 selection quoted $152,258 a year, inside a general band of roughly $105k–190k. ESA's 2022 class started around €6,000–7,000 a month; Roscosmos published cosmonaut salaries in 2019 equal to only about $25,000–30,000 a year before flight bonuses. Military astronauts stay on their service's officer pay.

How long does astronaut training take? About two years of basic training covers spacecraft systems, spacewalking in a giant pool, robotics, jet flying, wilderness survival and the Russian language. Graduation only makes you eligible: a specific mission then adds 18–30 months of dedicated training across Houston, Star City, Cologne and Tsukuba. Counting the prior degrees and career, most astronauts fly 15–20 years after leaving school.