Has spacesuit, will travel: former SpaceX employee is among Nasa's new recruits

Robb Kulin is about to begin two years of intensive astronaut training. At the end, if he's lucky, he'll go to space

When Nasa was looking for its first astronauts in 1959, it turned to the US military. Alan Shepard, the first American in space, was a navy aviator and test pilot. John Glenn, the first American to orbit the earth, was a marine. Other members of the original "Mercury Seven" were drawn from the air force.

Fifty-eight years later, the US space agency is looking further afield, including among its latest crop of 12 astronaut candidates a marine biologist, a doctor, a university professor and an engineer, as well as a number with a military background. Unlike the Mercury Seven, five of the class of 2017 are women.