Those early interactions with space set her on a path toward the lifelong goal of one day becoming an astronaut, she said. She got to see Mars and the rings of Saturn - the size of a pinky fingernail through the lens of a telescope - in her own backyard, she said. Her grandfather shared his love of astronomy and telescopes with Burnham while she was growing up. Nichole Ayers, Christopher Williams, U.S. The 10 candidates stand for a photo at the Johnson Space Center in Houston on Dec. This photo provided by NASA shows its 2021 astronaut candidate class, announced on Monday, Dec. Burnham interned with NASA while earning her master’s in mechanical engineering. She’s a military child who graduated high school in California and was born at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey. She said she enjoys paragliding out of Hatcher Pass and also has a helicopter and airplane instrument ratings. “It takes a lifetime of effort, I feel like, to kind of reach this point.”īurnham is a Navy lieutenant who serves in the Navy Reserves. She’s worked on oil rigs around the Arctic, which is where she said she first developed the operational skills that helped her get to NASA.īecoming an astronaut “was definitely a childhood dream,” Burnham said. “As one of the few women currently flying the F-22 Raptor (a military fighter aircraft), Ayers led the first-ever all-woman F-22 formation in combat in 2019,” her NASA biography page says.īurnham has lived in Alaska off and on for 10 years while working in the oil and gas industry, she said in an interview Tuesday. Two women with Alaska connections will soon report for duty at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, as members of the space agency’s newest astronaut candidate class.ĭeniz Burnham, 36, who lives with her fiance in Wasilla, and Nichole Ayers, 32, who works on Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, were selected along with eight other candidates out of a pool of over 12,000 applicants, NASA announced this week.Īyers, who considers Colorado home, is the assistant director of operations for the 90th Fighter Squadron at Elmendorf Air Force Base, according to NASA. NASA astronauts Nichole Ayers and Deniz Burnholm. Updated: DecemPublished: December 8, 2021
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