USA track cyclist launches new career with Nasa

The 11-time American track champion Christina Birch has successfully joined the latest US Astronaut programme by NASA.

Birch has made it to the last 10 candidates to try and become the next group of NASA astronauts to be part of the team working on the International Space Station (ISS).

The 10 candidates stood out amongst a staggering 12,000 applicants with other members of the group being from Navy, Air Force or NASA backgrounds. But Birch does have a stellar set of qualifications in a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry and molecular biophysics from the University of Arizona.

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She also earned a doctorate in biological engineering from MIT and taught bioengineering at the University of California, Riverside.

Birch's cycling palmarès are of course also impressive. Her career began in cyclocross, but she later went onto the boards of the track where she won 11 national titles, two gold medals at the Pan-American Games as well as a spot on the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games long team before retiring

In the NASA announcement ceremony for the 2021 astronaut class Birch said: "As you can see, from my incredible classmates seated here beside me, there’s really no one path to becoming a NASA astronaut candidate.

"And, you know, you might think that my path as a bio engineer and a cyclist is a little bit out there, but it was really all of those skills that I gained from those experiences that helped me get here. And so I think my advice would be to find something that you’re really interested in—really curious about, passionate about—and explore that deeply.

"And I think if you approach every day trying to do the little things, well, they will add up to something really big, and that might be sitting here someday as a NASA astronaut candidate."

The astronaut candidates will report for duty at the Johnson Space Center in January of 2022 where they will start their two year training plan.

The candidates will be trained on five major categories: operating and maintaining the International Space Station's complex systems, training for spacewalks, developing complex robotics skills, safely operating a T-38 training jet, and Russian language skills.