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NASA is hiring — and the job description is unlike any other on Earth. The space agency announced on Saturday that it is recruiting its next class of astronauts, the people who will return to the Moon, help build a lunar base, and lay the groundwork for the first crewed missions to Mars. Applications close at 11:59pm Eastern time on Thursday, December 3, 2026. If you have ever dreamed of leaving the planet for a living, you have less than a month to apply.
Who can apply
The bar is high, but it is wider than it used to be. Applicants must be US citizens, and they need a master's degree in a STEM field — engineering, biological science, physical science or computer science — from an accredited institution. NASA also accepts at least two years of doctoral work in those fields or mathematics, a medical degree, or completion of a nationally recognised Test Pilot School programme by July 2027. In a change from previous requirements, NASA will now also accept applicants with a nursing degree. There is no age limit, and no requirement for 20/20 vision.
Education alone is not enough. Candidates also need at least three years of related professional experience after earning their qualifying degree. Pilots can meet that requirement with 750 hours as pilot in command of high-performance jets, or with other combinations of fixed-wing and rotary-wing flight time. Everyone must pass NASA's long-duration astronaut flight physical and demonstrate leadership, teamwork and communication skills. The last time NASA opened applications, in 2024, more than 8,000 people applied — and just 10 candidates were selected in 2025. Selection for this round is expected in late 2027.
What the job actually involves
Getting selected is not a ticket to space; it is the start of a pipeline. New candidates complete nearly two years of training — spacewalking, lunar geology, flying high-performance aircraft — before they even become eligible for a flight assignment. The people chosen in this round are meant to become the crews who work on the lunar surface, venture to the Moon's south pole under the Artemis programme, and eventually prepare for Mars. NASA has also opened bidding to eight companies, including SpaceX, Blue Origin and Lockheed Martin, for future lunar delivery missions under the second phase of its Commercial Lunar Payload Services programme — the unglamorous logistics that make a Moon base possible.
The timing is no accident. Artemis aims to return astronauts to the Moon, and NASA is building the workforce for a permanent presence there in the 2030s. That makes this recruitment round different from the ones that came before it: earlier classes trained mostly for low Earth orbit and the International Space Station, while this class is being hired explicitly for the Moon. If you meet the requirements, the application is on NASA's astronaut recruitment page — and the clock runs out on December 3. For more science from this batch, see The Driest Desert on Earth Just Burst Into Flower and our earlier report on Japan's False 9.9 Earthquake Alert.