This week, NASA announced its newest class of astronauts: 12 extremely qualified individuals who will train for the next two years to fly to space. While many of these new hires have a few shared traits — such as degrees in STEM or flight experience — they all have extremely diverse interests and backgrounds. The new group includes former military personnel, doctors, marine biologists, engineers, and a geologist who worked on the Mars Curiosity rover.

We spoke with two of NASA’s newest astronaut candidates, Robb Kulin and Zena Cardman, who perfectly illustrate that there is no normal path for becoming an astronaut. Kulin has spent most of his career at SpaceX, working on the Falcon 9 rocket and making sure the company’s missions are safe and reliable. Cardman has primarily been focused on studying ecosystems of lakes and oceans and learning how to do science on other worlds.

Though the two do have something fairly unique in common: they’ve both spent time in Antarctica. And they say that living there was a good way to train for leaving the planet.

These interviews have been edited and condensed.

Robb Kulin

Image: NASA

You grew up in Anchorage, Alaska. What was it like living so far up north and did it contribute in any way to wanting to go to space?

Growing up in Alaska is absolutely incredible. I hate to say this being in Texas right now, but there’s honestly no other place in the world I’d rather live more than Alaska. Some of the great parts about it are the adventurous people that you find yourself surrounded by. One of my good friends growing up, she was the youngest person for quite a while to climb Denali, which kind of gives you a flavor for the spirit of people that you’re with. A lot of people spend time flying their own planes around the state, going on adventurous trips. And I think that whole spirit for adventure and exploration is kind of what got me interested in space in the first place.

You’re no stranger to living in cold environments, since you’ve also spent time as an ice driller in Antarctica. How was that experience?

Antarctica is, I’d say, the most off-planet experience you can probably have on the planet. I was in two different places down there, once working deep in the interior in a place called the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. And it’s like being out on the ocean there. It’s flat, white, no topology… and it’s mind blowing.

And the other region that I was in is a place called the Taylor Glacier [which is on a dry valley]. That area is incredible, because as you can imagine from the name, dry valleys means that there’s not a lot of precipitation. So what you get is a lot of old snow and old ice and a lot of bare rock. The rocks down there bring about a whole different picture than what you think about when you’re in mountains elsewhere. It’s phenomenal and gorgeous; it’s just like being on a different planet in some ways.

At what point did you start getting interested in space?

Maybe you could say I’m not very smart, because what gave me the space bug was actually doing a project on the Columbia disaster back in undergrad — looking at the approach of the investigation and some of the findings there. And I guess I’d never really thought much about space until that point. That kind of let me bridge out and think more about space and NASA in general. I wasn’t attracted by the awfulness there, of course, but it was an introduction in general to start looking in that direction.

And that eventually led you to working at SpaceX. When did you first get involved with the company?

My first introduction to SpaceX, I kind of rolled my eyes because I’d seen their first couple of failures and I wasn’t imaginative enough to understand what they were really trying to achieve. When I really got turned onto SpaceX was when I went out fo