Raja Chari

Raja Chari (born June 24, 1977, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S.) is an American astronaut who spent 176 days in space aboard the International Space Station (ISS) from 2021 to 2022. He is part of the Artemis team of astronauts who are eligible to fly to the Moon in the mid-2020s.

Chari received a bachelor’s degree in astronautical engineering and engineering science from the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado, in 1999. He then earned a master’s degree in aeronautics and astronautics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2001.

In the air force, Chari flew on combat missions in the Iraq War and logged some 2,500 hours of flight time on various aircraft, and he eventually reached the rank of colonel. He was the commander of the 461st Flight Test Squadron, which tested the F-35 aircraft, and director of the F-35 Integrated Test Force at Edwards Air Force Base in California when he was selected as a NASA astronaut in 2017.

Chari was selected in 2020 as one of 18 astronauts who would be part of future missions in the Artemis program, which would return humans to the Moon for the first time since the 1970s. Crewed Artemis missions are scheduled to begin in 2025.

Chari’s first spaceflight was as commander of the SpaceX Crew-3 Dragon, which launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on November 10, 2021, to the ISS. He and fellow astronauts, Americans Kayla Barron and Tom Marshburn and German Matthias Maurer, spent 176 days aboard the ISS. Chari performed two space walks: one with Maurer to install hoses on a radiator that helps keep the ISS’s systems cool and the other with Barron to prepare for a new solar panel array. Crew-3 returned to Earth on May 6, 2022.