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Aspiring Astronauts, You Have Two Months to Send Your Resume to NASA

Benefits include exotic travel destinations and extreme weight loss.
Photo: Pixabay

NASA astronaut recruitment promo. Video: NASA/YouTube

If you're in the market for a job with out-of-this-world travel benefits, NASA has good news for you. This morning, the agency kicked off its latest open call for astronaut candidates, complete with the above recruitment video and a Reddit AMA with NASA astronaut Shannon Walker and selection manager Anne Roemer, scheduled for 4PM EST.

Applications will be accepted on this website until February 18, 2016, and the new class of would-be spacefarers will be announced in mid-2017. But before you shoot off your resume, be sure that you meet the minimum qualifications. Eligibility is contingent on US citizenship and a bachelor's degree in engineering, biological science, physical science, computer science, or mathematics. It will also help your odds to have racked up at least 1,000 hours piloting a jet aircraft, or at least three years of comparable experience, according to the official announcement.

While pursuing an off-Earth career is perennially exciting, now is a particularly interesting time to get in the running. Hopefully, NASA's Commercial Crew Program (CCP) will be debuting within the next few years, which will return crewed launches to American soil after a long stint of dependence on Russia for astronaut transport.

Moreover, NASA's Orion spacecraft is currently in development for ambitious future deep space missions—including crewed trips to Mars. Perhaps some of the candidates recruited by this call will end up taking those momentous first steps on another planet.