Jonny Kim, Astronaut Moments

Dedicated to a life full of learning, NASA astronaut Jonny Kim is prepared for his first mission to the International Space Station, where he will conduct scientific investigations and technology demonstrations to help prepare for future space missions and provide benefits to people on Earth. The former Navy SEAL and emergency medicine resident will launch on the Roscosmos Soyuz MS-27 spacecraft in April 2025 along with Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky, serving as a flight engineer and member of the Expedition 72/73 crew for approximately eight months. Get the latest updates from Kim and other NASA astronauts aboard the orbiting laboratory by following @JonnyKimUSA or @Space_Station on X. JSC# jsc2025m000029

What is said in the film

Lifelong learning is-- is a life goal of mine. So when we start off in this world as really young children, we have this uninhibited belief in ourselves that we can go out and do anything. And I think along the way, when we grow up, we lose a little bit of that. We, as adults, as human beings, as learners, are always more capable than we give ourselves credit for. You're never too late to learn something new or start a new venture.

Start a new adventure. Yeah, I had-I had the honor of serving our country as a SEAL earlier in my life, and, later on, as a physician, and now as an astronaut, and I've learned unique things from all of them. This lesson I learned early in SEAL training-- to pass the crucible of this training, it's called hell week. Essentially, you're up for five, five and a half days. No sleep.

You get-you get, like, a couple hour breaks. But essentially, for those five and a half days, you are enduring very harsh physical conditions. After 24 hours, we got our first meal in the galley. Hot food. We were still cold, 'cause you're sopping wet and shivering at the table, but it was in a warm environment, and one of the instructors said, "I have the entire schedule for the rest of hell week.

Who wants to see it? " And about a dozen people raised their hands, and they went over, and about a dozen people immediately quit because they could not humanly comprehend the amount of pain and suffering that was ahead of them. But those who just chose to focus on their next meal, they just had that to work with. Not this. Any kind of goal, any kind of mission, if you just think about where you are and the end goal and all the work in between, you're never going to make it.

It's too overwhelming. But if you break that up into much smaller bite sized pieces, everyone can achieve greatness. And that's what we do here at NASA. Medicine's the last thing I wanted to do. I feel like the universe just kind of picked that path for me.

Like, "You will do this. " In order for me to join the Navy as soon as possible, I had to become a medic, or what we call a hospital corpsman. So that kind of set the foundation of my introduction to medicine. And then, of course, in the SEAL team, one of my duties was to be the combat medic, and I had the fortune to be able to treat people when they needed help most. After my experiences in combat and in the military, I just needed to do something else.

But I still wanted to serve the public and help others. And to me, medicine was the natural choice. And at NASA, I have been able to kind of put a lot of those lessons that I learned in my life to practice here. I really feel like I was almost pulled in this direction. I had never seriously considered being an astronaut.

It's not because I didn't want to be one. It's just I thought it was unattainable for me, especially as a kid. That started to change as I continued to grow and develop as an adult and have new experiences and realizing, like we talked about earlier, about lifelong learning. It's never too late to learn something new or develop. And so I was very inspired by NASA.

It was actually the first Orion mission, right? It was on YouTube. I don't know how it came on my feed, but it was an amazing narration of this mission that I knew nothing about. And that was the first seed for me to be like, "Wow, NASA is doing something incredible and they are impacting the community and the world. I would like to be a part of it.

" And the more I learned about NASA, the more I realized that the same forces that had pulled me into the SEAL teams, into medicine, which is leaving the world better than we found it in our own way, I certainly think NASA does that very, very well. And so I became inspired. I wanted to be a part of the mission, contribute to the mission, and help inspire the world and the next generation to make this world a better place, because right now, it's the only one we got. I'm Jonny Kim, and I'm a NASA astronaut.

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