Astronauts salary packages and process to become one

New Delhi : At one time in life, most people desire to become an astronaut and hit space, but the dreamy affair requires a lot when you wish to take it as a profession. This is a demanding job and requires good physical balance to get attractive packages. Let's find out the details below:

It should be noted that even after you start your career as an astronauts, it requires a lot of experience before you are set to leave the earth. Initially, astronauts begin their career as fighter jet pilots. They must have at least three years of experience of flying super fast jets or log 1,000 flying hours.

Apart from this, they also require to have a masters degree in science, engineering, or maths, and then they must pass a demanding selection process.

Those who wish to become an astronaut must pass a gruelling physical exam, and then undergo interviews where their leadership, teamwork and communications skills will be carefully assessed.

To keep things more clear about how hard is the process, NASA had selected only 12 candidates out of 18,300 applicants.

Once you clear all the examinations, this is definitely one of the high paying jobs. NASA pays its employees on a scale called the Federal Government’s General Schedule.

This is broken down into ‘grades’ known as GS-12 and GS-13 and each grade has 1 to 10 ‘steps’ to progress through.

The starting salary is $66,167 (£57,110) per year for GS-12 step 1.

Once you reach GS-12 step 10, you could be earning $81,021 (£70,326) per year.

Astronauts that have reached GS-13 step 10 are earning $102,288 (£83,625) per year.

Recently, NASA had listed job vacancies with a salary band of $104,898 to $161,141 per year. It must be noted that most of the astronauts are not prepared to go to moon or other planets; many of them end up working at the International Space Station.

Two astronauts are set to do just this, Douglas Hurley and Robert Behnken, for SpaceX on May 27.