A Virginia native is part of NASA’s latest class of soon-to-be astronauts.
Ben Bailey was born and raised in Charlottesville – and comes to NASA with a very diverse educational and professional background.
“I went to the University of Virginia, and I studied mechanical engineering while I was there," Bailey says. "And I left there and went and pursued mechanical engineering or nuclear engineering at the shipyard in Newport News.”
From there, Bailey logged more than 2,000 flight hours as a helicopter pilot for the U.S. Army. He most recently served as an experimental test pilot for the Army – trying out new technologies.
Bailey says he submitted the astronaut application last year, not thinking he’d really get a shot...
“I didn’t really recognize that these different endeavors, that these different careers, were sort of lining up towards this," he says. "It wasn’t until I wound up at Navy test pilot school and I saw the pictures on the walls of the astronauts that had graduated from there – at that point it was sort of an awakening that this was an achievable goal; something that I could potentially do.”
But NASA did come calling – the agency announced Bailey as part of its latest candidate class this week.
I asked him what NASA mission he is most excited about – from trips to the International Space Station to the Artemis mission, which would see astronauts return to the moon…
“All of them. All of them sound fantastic. Put me in coach…”
And Bailey has this advice for kids in high school and thinking about college.
“It’s ok to change careers. It’s ok to not know where you’re going. It’s ok to enter college with some skepticism," Bailey says. "And maybe you exit college, and you enter a career field and it’s not quite what you’re looking for – that’s ok!”
Bailey will undergo two years of extensive training before being assigned to a NASA mission.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
