Vice President Kamala Harris is expected to be the Democratic nominee for the US presidential election this year. With her running, the question now is who could be the potential vice president on the ticket. Many names have been put forward. Transport Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper have been suggested, just to name a few. And among the list of likely options, there is also former astronaut Mark Kelly.
Mark Kelly became the junior senator for Arizona in the special election of 2020 following the death of John McCain. He was reelected in 2022 for a full term, but Kelly had not been a stranger to politics before then. He is married to Gabby Giffords, who was first a representative and then a senator in Arizona, and then a US representative for just over three terms. At the beginning of her third term, on January 8, 2011, Giffords was shot in the head during an assassination attempt that left six dead and 15 injured.
Giffords recovered, and she and Kelly campaigned for stricter background checks on gun owners. Senator Kelly retired from NASA in the aftermath of the shooting to help Giffords with her recovery. He commanded his last mission in May 2011, before hanging up his spacesuit for good the following month. In total, Kelly has spent 54 days in space, flying on multiple space shuttle missions. Kelly was at NASA for 15 years, selected with his identical twin brother Scott Kelly, who is now also retired. They are the only siblings who have ever traveled to space.
Senator Kelly and his brother provided an invaluable service to human spaceflight beyond their active service. They took part in a twin study, allowing medical researchers to evaluate the effect of space on the human body. Scott Kelly spent more than 11 months between 2015 and 2016 in space, and they had a pretty good control sample in Senator Kelly who stayed on Earth.
Kelly is not the only astronaut-turned-politician in the US. John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth, was a senator for nearly 25 years from 1974. In 1976, Harrison “Jack” Schmitt also became a senator. Schmitt is the only geologist to have walked on the Moon – and the only person we know to be allergic to Moon dust.
Other space travelers from across the world have turned to politics. Some politicians, such as former Senator Jake Garn and current NASA administrator Bill Nelson, flew into space while in office. But becoming Veep would be a record for Kelly against all the other astro-politicians.
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