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MS. STILSON:  Great. Irvin from Rochester wants to know, are there physical or

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psychological tests that must be passed by an astronaut?  If so, what are they?

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MS. HIRE:  There are a lot of physical and psychological tests that are performed during astronaut selection.

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And you've probably seen some of these, especially with quite a bit of humor in such movies as "The Right Stuff" and the "Space Cowboys"

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and you probably remember how we made a lot of humor about these tests. There's quite a battery of them.

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They've changed a good bit over the years as they've developed more of an inkling of what exactly it is that they're looking for

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in an astronaut, and especially as the missions have changed. For instance, the International Space Station mission,

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our typical crews now stay up there for six months at a time. So we certainly -- it's important to have someone that's

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going to be able to be in that environment for six months or longer. So there are quite a bit,

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quite a number of tests. But they're accomplished before astronauts are even selected to be astronauts.

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