Lauren Edgar has spent nearly two decades at NASA studying the moon and Mars, guiding rover missions and helping design lunar science for the Artemis program. Now, she’s trading her role behind the console for a shot at flying to space herself.
Edgar is one of the 10 people in NASA’s 2025 astronaut class, which was announced this week at Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston. The new candidates are a diverse group of pilots, engineers, doctors and scientists selected to possibly launch on future missions to the moon and Mars. For Edgar, finding out she’d been chosen was a huge surprise.
“I was so excited. You know, totally shocked,” she told Space.com in an interview the day of the announcement (Sept. 22). The first one she told about her big news? Her dog Coco. “I was walking around on the phone because I couldn’t sit still as I’m having this conversation, and so she was chasing me through the house,” Edgar said.”She knew that something was up.”
After Coco, Edgar immediately called her husband and family to celebrate.
She said that growing up in the Pacific Northwest gave her a love for the outdoors and an appreciation for the region’s rich aviation history — influences that guided her toward her interests in geology and exploration. Edgar’s fascination with space came from seeing a space shuttle launch in the second grade.
“I realized there were people onboard, and they were leaving the planet, and it made me wonder, ‘What else is out there?'” Edgar said.
Her niece, who is in second grade, watched NASA’s announcement online. Edgar pointed to the symmetry between the birth of her love for space and her niece’s current age, and encouraged anyone who wants to become an astronaut to pursue that dream with everything they have.
“Don’t give up,” Edgar said. “Nothing is impossible, and it takes a lot of people from a lot of different backgrounds to contribute to what we’re doing here in human exploration.”
Edgar’s path to becoming an astronaut candidate — or ASCAN, as they are affectionately referred to at NASA— was a rocky one, quite literally. Before her ASCAN selection, Edgar was working as deputy principal investigator on the Artemis 3 geology team, helping design the science goals for NASA’s upcoming crewed mission to the lunar surface.
The 17 years preceding her work on Artemis were focused on supporting the Mars Curiosity rover and Mars Exploration Rover missions. She was also responsible for facilitating geology training for NASA engineers, mission teams and astronauts.
While her role in the mission has changed, Edgar doesn’t see it as a paradigm shift. “I think I’m working towards the same goals that we had on those rover missions and on the Artemis 3 science team. I just get to serve in a slightly different role now, but the end goal is the same.”
“Previously, I was working in a role where we were asking the astronauts … to conduct certain science tasks, or deploy an instrument, or make these observations. And suddenly I need to think through, like, ‘Oh, wow, I might get to be that person doing some of these activities,’ and you realize the high cognitive load that it takes to be operating in these challenging and remote environments while focusing on the mission objectives,” Edgar said. “I’m excited to take on that new challenge.”
One of those challenges may very well be a mission to the moon. NASA is targeting landing sites near the lunar south pole for its Artemis missions, which the agency hopes to evolve into a sustainable and continuous presence on the moon.
Edgar views the lunar south pole as a critical destination for advancing planetary science and for enabling humanity’s push deeper into space. “That will be a really important place to go, from both a science perspective and also having a sustained presence and using that as a launching area to test a lot of things that we’ll need for longer duration missions to Mars,” she said.
NASA sees Artemis missions to the lunar surface as stepping stones, where technologies and techniques for long-term expeditions can be perfected on an eventual path to Mars. Edgar said that’s something she’s dreamed of.
Edgar said that she and many others on her rover teams often had to do their best to put themselves in the rovers’ shoes and imagine themselves on the Martian surface, constantly thinking, “How would I connect this landscape in my mind?” And she’s interested in going to Mars herself; Edgar said she “would welcome the opportunity if it ever came.”
NASA’s 2025 ASCANs will spend the next two years in intensive training at JSC and other NASA centers as they prepare to graduate to flight-ready astronauts. That training will cover a wide range of skills, including learning to fly various spacecraft, conducting spacewalk simulations, foreign language courses, science lessons and more.
Like the group’s various backgrounds, NASA emphasizes diverse cross-familiarization to ensure that all astronauts have the skills they need to support one another in remote, potentially high-stress environments. “If you’re the only people out there on a mission together, you need to be able to take care of each other and take care of the mission objectives,” Edgar said.
She said she’s especially looking forward to the group’s geology training, and noted they will be trained in several different subspecialities.
“I think the composition of our class reflects the needs of the program,” Edgar said. “We’re going to need amazing pilots to fly to some of these really challenging environments. We’re going to need people with medical backgrounds to keep us safe while we’re on longer duration missions. We’re going to need engineers. We’re going to need scientists. And I think you’re seeing that in the full class composition. It’s really fun to learn from each other, and I can’t wait to see everything that comes ahead.”
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