Photo provided by NASA/Bill Stafford
Yuri Kubo, a Columbus native, is one of 10 new NASA astronaut candidates introduced at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas on Monday.
As a kid growing up in Columbus, Yuri Kubo would play with LEGO space sets and imagine traveling to distant planets. He made a giant leap towards realizing that dream when he was introduced this week as one of a select few that will train as a NASA astronaut candidate.
“When I was 7 or 8, I realized… I want to be in space. I want to go to another planet,” Kubo told The Republic. “’I want to be these little LEGO people.’”
Kubo, 40, was one of 10 new NASA astronaut candidates introduced at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas on Monday after a competitive selection process involving more than 8,000 applicants spanning the country.
Now, Kubo and his classmates will go through nearly two years of training. At that point, they will become eligible for flight assignments supporting future science and exploration missions to low Earth orbit, the moon, and Mars.
“It still doesn’t feel real, frankly,” Kubo said. “It’s been surreal.”
Kubo is part of NASA’s 24th astronaut class, joining 370 astronaut candidates since the selection of the original Mercury Seven in 1959. Over the next couple of years, he will undergo wilderness survival training, high-performance-jet training, learn to space walk and become familiar with how to use the complex systems aboard the International Space Station.
The application process is only open once every four years. Kubo got the news about two months ago while he was working as senior vice president of engineering at Electric Hydrogen, a company that designs and manufactures electrolyzers. During a meeting, he got a phone call with “US Government” on the caller ID and had to excuse himself. Then came “a wide range of emotions.”
“At first, it was disbelief,” Kubo said. “Like, you’ve got to me kidding me— who is this on the other side of this call? And then it was excitement and elation. And then from elation it went to being deeply humbled by being selected, the gravity of understanding that there are some big footsteps to follow in here.”
Kubo lived in Columbus until he headed to Muncie for his junior and senior year of high school at the Indiana Academy for Science, Mathematics, and Humanities where he graduated in 2004. He went to North for his freshman and sophomore years.
“I think it was a great place to grow up,” he said of Columbus. “I think that’s the overwhelming sentiment that I have. It was a small community. It was neighborliness. It was people looking out for each other.”
“I was born in Columbus, Indiana, I was raised in Columbus, Indiana. I was in The Republic a couple times actually growing up,” Kubo said. “There’s like a super awkward picture of me playing tennis, I think, as a child in The Republic.”
He was correct about that photo from Jan. 4 1997 showing Kubo, then a fifth-grader at Parkside, returning a shot from his dad, Isoroku, on a “warm weather Friday” at Donner Park.
Kubo enthusiastically recalled Ethnic Expo and the “interesting influx of really cool architecture and culture in town.” His mom, Mary Ann Kubo, was a teacher at then-IUPUC and Bartholomew Consolidated School Corp. She taught Japanese at North, East, the middle schools and was a strong advocate for language education.
Kubo was a Richards Elementary Raider before becoming a Parkside Pirate. He shouted out his third-grade teacher at Parkside, Larry McClelland, as one person who helped foster his passion for science.
“That guy was amazing,” Kubo said. “… We went through some pretty advanced science concepts for third-graders. He walked us through the scientific method and all these different really interesting concepts that grounded my love of science for the rest of my life.”
Kubo went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering in 2008 and a master’s degree in electrical and computer engineering in 2015, both from Purdue. The Boilermakers have two representatives in the latest round of NASA astronaut candidates— Kubo and Adam Fuhrmann, a major in the U.S. Air Force.
After graduation, Kubo spent 12 years at SpaceX, starting as a launch engineer working at what is now Vandenberg Space Force Base. Responsible for the design, build, commissioning and operations of the entire launch site, Kubo’s work was in support of the Falcon 9 rocket.
“I’m just super proud of that period of time because my contributions were so large because we had such a small team,” Kubo said. “But then I went to Hawthorne in LA and worked on Starshield, which is like the Starlink equivalent but for the government. And I’m proud of that time because I helped build a program. I helped build it from nothing. The very first satellite that we put in to space I think literally has my blood, sweat and tears on it because I was physically building this thing.”
He then ended his tenure at SpaceX as director of Ground Segment, including the operation of all SpaceX antennas used to communicate with space vehicles.
Kubo has overseen and been part of countless launch days in his previous roles, and said the experience differs depending on how many times you’ve flown, especially “on the ground side.”
“The very first flight that I did of a Falcon 9 (was a) very different story than the 30th or 40th time,” Kubo said. “The first one was controlled chaos is how I will describe it.”
He said he’s eager to see what launch days are like from the crew perspective.
“There’s always this tinge of excitement. There’s nothing quite like watching a rocket leave planet Earth. There’s nothing like it,” he said.
While he no longer has family in Columbus, Kubo said he will “always have the connection in his heart” to the place he grew up.
“I love Columbus. I miss it dearly. I am so proud to have grown up there. I’ve still got friends that live there and I just hope to do all of you proud.”
