Jonny Kim enlisted in the U.S. Navy straight out of high school in 2002, made it through BUD/S and joined SEAL Team 3. Across two deployments to the Middle East he ran more than 100 combat operations as a combat medic, sniper, navigator and point man, and came home with the Silver Star and the Bronze Star with Combat V.
He then went back to school — a mathematics degree, then Harvard Medical School, where he qualified as a doctor in 2016. A year later NASA picked him from more than 18,000 applicants for Astronaut Group 22, the first Korean-American to join the corps.
On 8 April 2025 he launched on Soyuz MS-27 to the International Space Station and spent 245 days in orbit. In 2026 he left NASA and returned to the Navy, this time to train as an aviator — operator, physician and astronaut in one career.
Photograph: NASA, public domain. · Wikipedia