How much can an astronaut earn in the NA …

The space race has experienced a renaissance in recent years with the arrival of EspaceX, the company of the South African billionaire, who joined the Nasa to send astronauts to International space station. In addition, the company is involved in projects such as the launch of broadband satellites. In this context, there is a demand for personnel for space missions: being an astronaut has become a more than attractive job opportunity, with salaries of up to $ 142,000 per year.

Being an astronaut means being part of a small group and you have to go through an extremely rigorous selection to achieve this. In principle, to enter the North American space agency You must be a U.S. citizen, have a college degree in science, math, or engineering, and three years of work experience or one thousand flight hours as a jet pilot.

The selection is so demanding that it is estimated that entering NASA is 74 times more difficult than entering Harvard University. NASA makes a selection of astronauts every two years. This year there is a call but, considering that In 2019, 18,000 candidates were registered and only eleven were able to enter, the lucky few will be few. One need only look at the demanding physical tests that candidates for the space program underwent at the end of the 1950s (Project Mercury, from which the first seven astronauts came), to have a dimension of its rigor.

The salary is based on the government salary scale. Academic performance and experience determine the professional category. These are categories used at all levels of public administration. In turn, each category is divided into ten other sub-categories, based on performance and years of service.

Basic salaries are the responsibility of the personnel administration office, which also takes care of leave, ergo, the figures change every year. The 2021 benchmarks indicate that a novice astronaut earns $ 66,167,000 per year. If you move on to the next category, after several years of good performance, you will earn $ 86,021 per year. In turn, the most skilled astronauts can enter $ 78,681 per year, and moving up one category the salary increases to $ 102,288 per year. The top of the scale is $ 142,000 per year.

At the same time, NASA’s link with Space X is strengthening, to which it has awarded a contract for the development of the module with which the United States intends to return to the Moon in 2021. Musk’s company will develop the first artificial lander by a company commercial. the idea is that one of the astronauts on the mission is a woman.