Jonny Kim, a 40-year-old graduate of the University of San Diego, is set to spend eight months at the International Space Station conducting research, becoming the latest NASA astronaut with San Diego ties to do so. According to the space agency, Kim will fly to the orbital base in March along with Russian cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky, marking his first space mission where he will serve as a flight engineer.
Kim enlisted in the Navy after high school in 2002 and eventually became a member of SEAL Team 3, based in San Diego. He deployed to Iraq twice during the war there, serving as a medic, sniper, and navigator. Kim enrolled at USD in 2009 and earned a degree in mathematics in three years before obtaining a medical degree from Harvard University. He was selected for astronaut training in 2017 and assigned to the Artemis Project, which aims to send astronauts to the moon.
Other local astronauts who have excelled at NASA include Jessica Meir and Kate Rubins, who graduated from UC San Diego and served at the International Space Station. Megan McArthur, also a UCSD alum, was an engineer on the final space shuttle flight and later spent six months at the space station. These astronauts follow in the footsteps of Sally Ride, the late first American woman to travel to space aboard the shuttle, who later joined the physics faculty at UCSD.
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