Washington: Indian-American astronaut Raja J Chari has been nominated by President Joe Biden for the appointment to the grade of Air Force brigadier general.
As per the US Defence Department, the nomination was announced and will have to be confirmed by the Senate which approves all senior civilian and military appointments.
The 45-year-old Air Force Colonel Chari was recommended for promotion to the rank of brigadier general. At the moment, he is the commander and astronaut for Crew-3 at the Johnson Space Center in Texas, which is operated by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
He earned a master’s degree in aeronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and graduated from the US Naval Test Pilot School in Patuxent River, Maryland. Chari served as the 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 was motivated to pursue a better education and a successful profession by his father Srinivas Chari, who left Hyderabad for the US to pursue an engineering degree. He met his wife and spent his entire career at John Deere in Waterloo. NASA and the European Space Agency chose Chari to lead the SpaceX Crew-3 mission to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2020. He brings a wealth of test pilot experience to his endeavour. In his career, he has flown for more than 2,500 hours total.
