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Kim, a 35-year-old Los Angeles native, graduated from the latest astronaut candidate class and is now eligible to partake in NASA missions. He is the second Korean-American NASA astronaut after Mark Polansky.
His resume includes Navy SEAL training and over 100 combat missions during two deployments to Iraq, where he served as a sniper, medic, and navigator; he earned a Silver Star for battlefield valor. He then graduated from the University of San Diego, where he earned a degree in mathematics; and then became an officer in the US Navy.
Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas joked that he felt “horribly, horribly inadequate” while speaking in front of a group of newly-graduated NASA astronauts on Friday.
“What the heck have we been doing with our lives,” Cruz said of himself and his Republican colleague, Sen. John Cornyn, and pointed to one of the astronauts in particular, US Navy Lt. Jonny Kim.
“You’re a Navy SEAL, with a degree to Harvard Medical School,” Cruz said of Kim. “That’s just ridiculous. I mean, he can kill you and bring you back to life — and do it all in space.”