Out of more than 18-thousand applicants, NASA is naming a dozen new astronauts to the corps including an Iowa native. Radio Iowa’s Matt Kelley reports:

(As said) –
Thirty-nine-year-old Raja Chari grew up in Cedar Falls and has degrees in aeronautics and astronautics from the Air Force Academy and M-I-T. He’s a lieutenant colonel and a test pilot for the Air Force and flew combat missions over Iraq. Chari was told a few weeks ago that he was among the final 12 astronaut candidates but was ordered to only share the secret with his immediate family.

Raja Chari (NASA photo)

“I was able to call my wife and that’s when there was screaming on her end and I was still in my office with all of the folks right outside the door,” Chari says, laughing. “I had to just do a little happy dance in place. It was about all I could do at the time to not totally give everything away.” Chari’s wife, Holly, is a Cedar Falls native and they have three children. His mother still lives in Cedar Falls. Chari graduated from Waterloo Columbus High School in 1995 before heading to the academy. He admits he hasn’t always dreamed of becoming an astronaut but learning to fly was one of his early goals, along with studying science.

He’ll report for duty at NASA in August and will face two years of rigorous astronaut training, but says he’s excited at the prospects of rocketing into orbit and perhaps — going well beyond.

This is a particularly exhilarating time to be joining the space program, he says, with so many new possibilities on the horizon as NASA looks past the space station and toward missions that may lead to the Moon and to Mars. He’s piloted all sort of aircraft and has helped in developing America’s newest fighter, the F-35. With the space shuttle fleet long since retired, the prospects of being the first to pilot a completely new spacecraft into orbit are a thrill for Chari: “I wouldn’t say daunted so much as excited.”

(Radio Iowa)