Astronauts are the elite few who are trained to travel outside the earth’s atmosphere on space shuttle missions. One has to go through intense physical and mental training before qualifying before one can actually go to space.
Basic qualification is Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Biological Sciences, Physical Sciences or Mathematics, and three years of related experience or at least 1,000 hours pilot-in-command time on jet aircraft. Distant and near visual acuity must be correctable to 20/20 for each eye. The use of glasses is acceptable. Before you make it to becoming an astronaut, you need to become a scientist and be passionate about it. Look at any astronaut’s biography and you will see that their education and accomplishments are typically much greater than what NASA states as a minimum. Year 2013 astronaut class for NASA consisted of eight astronauts who were selected from 6100 applicants. That means applicants for this class in the NASA astronaut corps had a 0.013% chance of being selected.
As per NASA people site “Other than under extremely rare exceptions, you must be a U.S. citizen in order to work for NASA as a civil service employee. If you are not a U.S. citizen, you may wish to consider opportunities with one of our International Space Partners.”
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