NASA astronaut Jonny Kim blasted into space on a Russian rocket on Monday night. Kim is beginning an eight-month research mission at the International Space Station.
NASA astronaut Jonny Kim, a University of San Diego alum, and two Russian crewmates launched successfully to the International Space Station on Tuesday on board a Russian spacecraft.
A Soyuz booster rocket lifted off as scheduled from the Russia-leased Baikonur launch facility in Kazakhstan to put the Soyuz MS-27 carrying the trio in orbit. They are set to dock at the station just over three hours later.
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WATCH HERENBC 7 meets the impressive Jonny Kim, a USD alum, Navy SEAL, Harvard Doc and NASA astronaut
Kim -- the first Korean-American NASA astronaut -- and Russia’s Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky are scheduled to spend about eight months at the space outpost.
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A native of Los Angeles, Kim is a U.S. Navy lieutenant commander and dual-designated naval aviator and flight surgeon. He was 16 years old when he first heard about the U.S. Navy SEALS and decided to enlist instead of going straight to college, he told NBC 7.
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Following his time with the SEALs, Kim went on to earn his bachelor's degree in Mathematics at the University of San Diego in 2012. In 2016, he graduated from Harvard Medical School.
Kim, Ryzhikov and Zubritsky will join NASA astronauts Don Pettit, Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s astronaut Takuya Onishi and Russian cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin, Ivan Vagner and Kirill Peskov on the space outpost.
