Who is Raja Chari? Indian-origin rookie astronaut commanding SpaceX Crew-3 mission

The SpaceX Crew-3 mission successfully lifted off on Wednesday from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Kennedy Space Center at 9:03 pm EST. The 22-hour pursuit will carry a four-member crew on the Crew Dragon Endurance spacecraft to the International Space Station. The six months mission to orbit was earlier postponed multiple times owing to unsuitable weather conditions and the undisclosed medical issue of one astronaut.

The Crew-3 flight to the ISS is carrying three NASA astronauts and one ESA astronaut for a six-month science mission until April 2022. The said flight will include Raja Chari as mission commander, Tom Mashburn as a mission pilot, Kayla Barron and ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer as a mission specialist.

Who is Raja Chari?

Chari (44) with an Indian origin has remained a US Air Force pilot for combat jets, the first rookie astronaut to command NASA space mission since the final crew took off to Sylab space station in 1973. Astronaut Chari is the third operational crew rotation flight to ISS. Chari was the commander of the 461st Flight Test Squadron and the Director of the F-35 Integrated Test Force. He was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to Peggy Egbert and Sreenivas V Chari and brought up in Cedar Falls Iowa. Raja Chari got married to Holly Schaffter Chari and has three children.

Chari attained his bachelor's degree in astronautical engineering from the Air Force Academy, as per SpaceFlight Now. He also attended flight school and flew several combat missions in the F-15E Strike Eagle in Iraq. The 44-year-old has led many combat mission deployments in the Korean Peninsula. He also went on to receive a master's degree in aeronautics from MIT.

As per NASA, Astronaut Chari has recorded more than 2,500 hours of flight time in F-35, F-18, F-16 combat jets. He also has a graduation degree from US Naval Test Pilot School in Patient River, Maryland and was appointed to become the commander of the 461st Flight Test Squadron and director of the F-35 Integrated Test Force in California.

Chari was selected for NASA in 2017 as a mission specialist for the Crew-3 flight. He along with classmate Kyla Barron will be the first members of the batch to fly to space. "It's really mind-boggling when you think about how much effort it takes to put people in space and then to sustain them in space," astronaut Chari said before the launch on Wednesday.

Image: @NASA_Twitter