NASA’s 24th astronaut class marks the first astronaut class composed of more women than men. For USC alum and newly inducted NASA astronaut candidate Katherine Spies, she said she feels privileged to be a part of the cohort.
Spies was one of 10 new astronaut candidates introduced last September out of more than 8,000 nationwide applicants. She received her undergraduate degree in chemical engineering from USC in 2004 before she earned her master’s in design engineering from Harvard University.
Spies joined the Marine Corps in 2004 and became an AH-1W Super Cobra pilot, and has flown more than 30 different aircraft. She has also logged over 2,000 flight hours, 300 of which are in combat zones.
Spies’ class of astronauts began their nearly two-year training last September before they became eligible for flight assignments supporting future science and exploration missions to low Earth orbit, the Moon and Mars.
She said she loves being in a class with just incredibly intelligent, thoughtful and powerful women.
“Coming from a background in engineering and aviation, you don’t always have a ton of women around you, and so it’s really wonderful to just see that starting to change,” Spies said.
In 2019, Viterbi reported that women comprised 50% of the entering undergraduate class. Spies said it’s exciting to see USC and NASA working to increase their cohort diversity.
“I remember reading that and being really inspired at the University for working to create the circumstances for more types of people from different backgrounds and different diversities and different genders to all come together,” Spies said.
Spies’ accomplishment offers fresh motivation for students like Michelle Murcia, a senior majoring in mechanical engineering, who have their sights set on the stars with aspirations of becoming an astronaut.
“The news that we have a Trojan astronaut — or one in the making — is really inspiring,” Murcia said last September in an interview with ATVN.
“Women are so powerful, and it’s about time that the world starts recognizing that,” said Diamond Mangrum last September, a fifth-year biomedical engineering PhD candidate. “I’m not surprised at all; women are amazing.”
Spies said that her time at USC played a critical role in shaping who she is today, both as an adult and a global citizen.
“There was always a focus on this breadth and depth of learning and who you are as a person,” Spies said in an interview with Annenberg Media. “The university didn’t let it escape that it mattered to show up as a contributing member of society, not just as an educated individual.”
USC has a student-faculty ratio of nine-to-one, according to the university. For Spies, those small class settings and a tight-knit cohort helped her grow academically and professionally.
“In some of those smaller courses where you’re really coming together as a team to tackle really challenging material, I just found an exceptional space to be challenged, to fail and then, inevitably, to grow,” Spies said.
Spies said the most important value she learned from her time at USC was to be open-minded about different opinions and solutions to solving problems.
“It’s really easy when you put all of your energy and care into a problem, to think that you have found the best way, and maybe you have found one of the best ways,” Spies said. “But what makes us better and what makes solving a problem better is being able to have a bunch of people who’ve thought of it differently.”
Spies said her philosophy is to “be in love with version 32,” underscoring the importance of working to improve a solution with help from different people who offer new perspectives.
“That’s something I really started to learn at USC, and you can only do that when you have people from different walks of life, different schools, different backgrounds, all coming together to do it,” Spies said.