Harvard doctor & ex-Navy SEAL Jonny Kim is first Korean-American NASA astronaut to head to space

Harvard doctor and ex-Navy SEAL Jonny Kim is officially the first Korean-American NASA astronaut!

At 35 years old, Jonny Kim graduated NASA's Artemis program last week after being selected from a pool of 18,000 applicants. He's now eligible to head to space for missions to the International Space Station, moon, and Mars. According to NASA, Jonny Kim and 12 others were trained in the technical and operational instruction of the International Space Station systems, Extravehicular Activities Operations, T-38 flight training, robotics, physiological training, expeditionary training, field geology, water and wilderness survival training, and Russian language proficiency training.

The child of Korean immigrants, Jonny Kim joined the Navy after graduating high school and eventually reached the top-status of Navy SEAL, serving as a medic, sniper, and navigator on over 100 combat operations. His achievements didn't stop there as he went on to obtain a doctorate of medicine at Harvard Medical School and become a resident physician at Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women's Hospital.

On his reasons for becoming an astronaut, he said in a 2017 interview with NASA, "I fundamentally believed in the NASA mission of advancing our space frontier all the while developing innovation and new technologies that would benefit all of humankind." He added on his achievements, "All things that are worthwhile are very difficult to obtain."