Kayla Barron

Kayla Barron (born September 19, 1987, Pocatello, Idaho, U.S.) is an American astronaut who spent six months on the International Space Station (ISS) from November 2021 to May 2022.

Barron earned a bachelor’s degree in systems engineering from the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, in 2010. She then received a Gates Cambridge scholarship to study nuclear engineering at the University of Cambridge in England. She earned a master’s degree in that subject in 2011. Barron was then assigned to the submarine USS Maine and was in the first group of women commissioned as submarine warfare officers in the U.S. Navy.

Barron returned to Annapolis as the flag aide to the Academy’s superintendent, Vice Adm. Ted Carter. There she met former astronaut Kathryn Hire, who told Barron about her mission to the ISS. Barron later recalled that she had noted to Hire that the ISS “sounds a lot like a submarine in space.” Hire agreed, and Barron decided to become an astronaut. Carter encouraged her to apply to NASA, and she was chosen as an astronaut in 2017.

Barron was selected in 2020 as one of 18 astronauts who would be part of future missions in the Artemis program, which would return humans to the Moon for the first time since the 1970s. Crewed Artemis missions are scheduled to begin in 2025.

Barron’s first spaceflight was on the SpaceX Crew-3 Dragon, which launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on November 10, 2021, to the ISS. She and her fellow astronauts, Americans Raja Chari and Tom Marshburn and German Matthias Maurer, spent 176 days aboard the ISS. Barron performed two space walks: one with Marshburn to replace a faulty antenna and the other with Chari to prepare for a new solar panel array. Crew-3 returned to Earth on May 6, 2022.