Astronaut Loral O’Hara is making her first spaceflight after selection as part of the 2017 NASA astronaut class. The Texas native earned a Bachelor of Science degree in aerospace engineering at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, and a Master of Science degree in aeronautics and astronautics from Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. Prior to joining NASA, her work focused on the engineering and operations of deep-ocean research submersibles and robots. At the time of her selection in June 2017, O’Hara was a research engineer at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, where she spent eight years working on the engineering and operations of underwater vehicles such as the human-occupied research submersible Alvin and the remotely operated vehicle Jason. O’Hara will launch to the space station on Sept. 15 for a mission with Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub. She will join Expedition 69/70 as a flight engineer aboard the space station.
