NASA Graduation: Major Jasmin Moghbeli. #Artemis #KnowYourMil - @GEORGEnews Today, Jan 12th, 2020

https://george.news | NASA Graduation: Major Jasmin Moghbeli. #Artemis #KnowYourMil | @GEORGEnews Today:Jan 12th, 2020 | Major Jasmin Moghbeli graduated from the NASA program being the 2nd female active duty officer in the Marine Corps | Video by Lance Cpl. Mellizza Bonjoc and Sgt. Savannah Mosby | Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheCollectiveQ
Houston, Jan 12: Jasmin "Jaws" Moghbeli earned her fierce nickname during her time as a decorated helicopter gunship pilot who flew more than 150 missions in Afghanistan.
The Marine Corps major, MIT graduate and college basketball player can now add another accomplishment to her burgeoning resume: the first Iranian-American astronaut.
Speaking to AFP after graduating in NASA's latest cohort, the 36-year-old immigrant said she hoped her example might help inspire others from similar backgrounds.
"I would love for everyone to be able to be inspired by everyone, but it is a little easier to be inspired by someone who looks like you or has something in common with you, so I do hope there is that influence," she said. She and her brother were born in Germany to Iranian parents, architecture students who had fled their native country after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. But Moghbeli grew up in Baldwin, New York, which she considers her hometown -- and her story after that reads like an immigrant's fairy tale. At 15, she attended an advanced space camp, cementing her ambition to one day reach for the stars. She graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she studied aeronautical engineering. But her parents were concerned to learn she then planned to become a military pilot (a well-trodden path to the astronaut corps). Moghbeli signed up in 2005 -- just four years after the September 11 attacks, and her parents were worried about what their daughter might face as a person of Middle Eastern heritage. "But once I joined, they gave me absolute support," she said, crediting the backing of her family, and later her partner Sam, whom she married three months ago, for her success. Following a brief US-Iranian rapprochement during the Obama years, tensions between the two countries have soared again under the current administration.