After Kalpana Chawla and Sunitha Williams, a 39-year-old techie has become the next Indian-American to have been selected for a prestigious NASA programme.

Raja Chari, a Lieutenant Colonel with the US Air Force, has been selected by NASA as a member of the 12-astronaut team for a mission into Earth orbit and deep space. The group, the largest in almost two decades selected by NASA, will undergo a two-year training from this August. The 12 candidates include six military officers, three scientists, two medical doctors, a lead engineer at SpaceX and a NASA research pilot.

Raja “Grinder” Chari is a commander of the 461st Flight Test Squadron and the director of the F-35 Integrated Test Force at Edwards Air Force Base in California. He earned a Master’s degree in aeronautics and astronautics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and graduated from the US Naval Test Pilot School. His father Srinivas Chari was an engineer, who immigrated to the US after his engineering from Osmania University in Hyderabad. Chari hails from Waterloo, Iowa.