A 19-year-old woman passed all the rigorous NASA tests required to fly to Mars?

Law:

Alyssa Carson, 19, “made history by passing all of NASA’s rigorous testing.”

Rating:

What is the truth

Alyssa Carson is a real person and at the time of writing she is 23 years old. She is training to become an astronaut and hopes to take part in a mission to Mars. At the time of this publication, she was in the process of writing her Ph.D. in Space and Planetary Sciences from the University of Arkansas, with an expected completion date of May 2028.

Which is false

As of May 2024, Alyssa had not passed “all of NASA’s rigorous testing” and was not officially part of the NASA astronaut candidate selection program.

Many posts on social media praise Alyssa Carson’s achievements as a young woman: “An impressive 19-year-old astronaut who made history by passing all of NASA’s rigorous tests to pioneer human travel to Mars.”

One like that post, shared on Facebook on April 27, 2024, compared a black-and-white photo of American model Kendall Jenner (left) with a photo of Carson (right), with a caption that read in part: “Let’s encourage our daughters to admire qualities like resilience, determination and intellect. Beauty now encompasses many dimensions. At the time of publication, the post below has received over 2,700 interactions.

The above post is an example of copypasta, a term that Snopes has used before characterized one of the most persistent forms of disinformation on the Internet. Like we did before reported“copypasta” is “a portmanteau of the words “copy” and “paste” (and a wink),” which, as the name suggests, refers to copied and pasted text shared on the Internet. Variations of the above post have been shared on other social media platforms, including: X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn AND Instagram.

Some iterations claims he said she “cannot marry (and) cannot have children” because “She is preparing to become the first human on Mars and will never return to Earth.” But as Reuters AND USA today reported in 2021, such claims are misleading and exaggerate her readiness to serve as a NASA astronaut.

Snopes investigated a similar rumor about Carson in 2018, when she was 17 years old. She was 23 years old at the time of writing (May 2024). While it is true that she has undergone some training to become an astronaut and hopes to take part in a mission to Mars, she has not passed “all of the rigorous NASA tests” required to do so. She was working on her Ph.D. in Space and Planetary Sciences from the University of Arkansas, with an expected completion date of May 2028.

For these reasons, we have rated this claim as “Mixture”.

Snopes reached out to Carson directly through her Instagram AND Facebook financial statements to clarify many points of the above statement. She recommended our newsroom to her father, Bert Carson, who stated that the report contained several factual inaccuracies.

First of all, the above post is out of date, he stated. From the Facebook post above, he is 19 years old. She was 23 years old at the time of this publication.

Moreover, as of May 2024, she was not officially part of NASA’s astronaut candidate selection program, which the space agency defines as “individuals selected by NASA as candidates for the NASA Astronaut Corps and are currently undergoing the candidate training program at Johnson Space Center.” What about these “flight tests”? The father said he didn’t know what the post was referring to.

According to him, since May 2024, she has participated in astronaut training at NASA, European Space Agency and Canadian Space Agency facilities with a private citizen research group.

He he directed us to her LinkedIn a page that lists her current occupation as an astronautics researcher and astronaut candidate at the University of International Institute of Astronautical Sciences (IIAS) in Florida. He is an astrobiologist preparing for a PhD. in Space and Planetary Sciences from the University of Arkansas, with an expected completion date of May 2028.

According to her father, she was first “introduced to the world” by BBC in 2014, when she was 12 years old and sat on a NASA panel discussing future Mars missions planned for the 2030s.

“T“Today you will see that she has accomplished a lot in building her resume to be among those chosen to go to Mars,” he told Snopes. “Between training and research, he spends most of his life establishing himself as a valuable scientist heading to Mars.”

According to NASA, only in the first half of 2024. Over 8,000 people applied to become astronauts. From this pool, 8 to 12 people will become astronaut candidates, which requires two years of training before the candidate is eligible for spaceflight. As of this writing, the space agency has selected 360 astronaut candidates to fly on space exploration missions since the program began in 1959.

Sources