Jasmin Moghbeli tells Long Island school kids how she realized dream of becoming astronaut

Jasmin Moghbeli remembers the moment she decided she would travel into space.

As a Lenox Elementary School student in Baldwin, she wrote a book report about Valentina Tereshkova, of Russia, the first woman to go to space.

"From that point forward, I always wanted to be an astronaut," said Moghbeli.

Now after accomplishing her dream of living in the International Space Station, she paid the inspiration back Thursday morning, speaking with more than 300 elementary school students from Freeport, Uniondale and Franklin Square at the Cradle of Aviation Museum.

Dressed in her blue NASA jumpsuit and using a widely projected slideshow, Moghbeli stood before second-, fifth-, and sixth-grade students in the museum’s planetarium theater and talked about her childhood, how she became an astronaut, and her six-month experience in the space station.

Born in Germany to Iranian parents, Moghbeli told students she came to the United States as a baby. She recalled bringing brownies to her second-grade classroom the day she became a naturalized citizen because she felt so happy.

"I think even at a young age, I knew being in this country provided me with so many opportunities," she said to students.

Moghbeli said while she loved all subjects in school, math was one she became passionate about and succeeded in. She studied aerospace engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and received a master’s degree from the Naval Postgraduate School.

Moghbeli told Newsday she knew the odds of becoming an astronaut were slim, but always tried to follow her passions, such as joining the Marine Corps. She rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel and became an AH-1W Super Cobra pilot and a test pilot.

"There’s no singular path to becoming an astronaut," said Moghbeli, who explained that many of her colleagues come from different backgrounds. "I just tried to never close that door off to becoming an astronaut, but I just tried to pursue what I was interested in."

After many interviews with NASA, she received a life-changing call on May 25, 2017, when she was asked to join the 2017 astronaut candidate class.

Moghbeli told students it was such an emotional moment, she had difficulty calling her family and telling them the news because her hands were shaking so much.

"This was a dream that started when I was your age, when I was in elementary school, that was coming through for me on that day," she said.

Her next two years of training consisted of outdoor survival training, spacewalks in a mock space station, and learning Russian, to communicate with international astronauts.

Her class, which was composed of engineers, military service members, doctors, and civilians of different ethnicities, also learned how to maintain and make repairs on the ship, she said to students.

"If something breaks in space, we're the only ones who can go out there and fix it," Moghbeli said.

She was then asked to be the commander of NASA’s SpaceX-7 mission, which launched on Aug. 23, 2023.

Moghbeli said she felt honored to be part of a diverse team, as each member of the four-person team came from a different country: Denmark, Japan, Russia and the United States.

While in space, she and her team spent their time conducting scientific experiments and tests, such as trying to grow plants and technology demos like biofabrication to attempt to create organs.

Curious students asked Moghbeli questions about what life was like in a space station, from how does one sleep to her morning routine and how to use the bathroom.

Moghbeli said she missed taking showers but floating in zero gravity was something she never grew tired of.

While each astronaut has their own method of bathing, Moghbeli told students she would slowly apply warm water and soap on her body and then carefully wipe it off. 

She also told students that returning home was more intense than traveling to space. While Earth is set at 1G gravity, it felt like 2G, and if her center of balance was off even a little she felt like falling.

"When they handed me my sneakers for the first time, they felt like dumbbells," Moghbeli said of her return to Earth's gravity. "Everything just felt really, really heavy.

Moghbeli and her team spent 45 days resistance training to gain back their strength and were observed to see how zero gravity affected their bodies.

Brandon Escoto, 9, of Walnut Street School in Uniondale, said he was inspired by Moghbeli’s talk because of her military background.

"It was really fun and interesting because I got to learn about what astronauts do in space," he said.

Samantha Diaz Mendoza, 9, of Bayview Avenue School in Freeport, said she wants to be an astronaut when she grows up and was happy to learn about Moghbeli’s path.

"She made me want to be an astronaut even more," she said. "Her words were inspiring."

Moghbeli said now that she is back on Earth, she is supporting the crews that are now flying on the International Space Station and helping train astronauts. But she would "love to do another mission," either back to the International Space Station, or an Artemis mission to the moon.

But for right now, she is happy to share her story and inspire future astronauts.

"What’s really cool for me is I remember when I was a kid and wanted to do this," she said. "It's really a bit surreal to be on the other side now of this, but I know how much it means to have any sort of connection where those kids feel like, OK, if she can do it, I can do it too."