Clovis has a homegrown hero: Meet Jessica Wittner, one of America’s new astronauts | Opinion
If a Jessica Wittner Day is not yet being planned in Clovis, city leaders better get on it.
Never heard of her? Just wait. Wittner’s young career is already chock full of notable successes, and she just achieved the biggest one: The 2001 graduate of Buchanan High School is one of America’s newest astronauts.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration last week announced its 10-member Astronaut Group 23. Wittner, a lieutenant commander in the Navy, was the only Californian to be picked. She is one of four women; the other six are men.
Bee staff writer Joshua Tehee caught up with her right after the graduation ceremony at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. “I’m filled with excitement and energy right now,” Wittner told him in a phone interview.
It is not hyperbole to say she joins elite company. NASA has had only 360 astronauts since 1959, when the original Mercury Seven were selected. There were 12,000 applicants in the initial group that Wittner ultimately emerged from on her way to becoming an astronaut.
First a fighter pilot
Wittner was born in Fresno but grew up in Clovis, which is where her parents still reside. After graduating from Buchanan High, Wittner enlisted in the Navy as an aviation machinist mate and worked as an aircraft mechanic. In 2006 she was accepted into an officer commissioning program, and went on to earn a bachelor’s of science degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Arizona, graduating magna cum laude. She earned a master’s in that field from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School.
As a new officer, Wittner joined a fighter squadron aboard the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan. She then was a test pilot at China Lake before getting stationed at Lemoore Naval Air Station as the assistant operations officer and head of the fighter squadron known as the Vigilantes.
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In December 2021 Wittner was picked as an astronaut candidate. She reported for duty a month later to start the two-year training program.
She was taught how to spacewalk and work with robotics. Wittner learned space station systems and Russian, as that country frequently sends cosmonauts into space.
Astronaut to the moon?
Wittner’s biography on the NASA website says she likes riding motorcycles “and exploring hard-to-reach places on long overlanding trips.” Such interests will have set her up well for future missions.
The space agency says the new group of astronauts “may be assigned to missions destined for the International Space Station, future commercial space stations, and Artemis campaign missions to the moon in preparation for Mars.”
In 2017, the space agency launched the Artemis project, a series of new lunar missions with the ultimate goal of eventually launching a mission to Mars. An unmanned test flight was launched in 2022. A second, fly-by mission was scheduled to happen this year but was postponed until 2025.
“I would love to go to the moon,” Wittner told Tehee, adding that was the consensus among her peers. “I think you’re going to hear that from a lot of people.”
“That’s like the next frontier right now,” she said. “We know what questions need to be answered.”
Parade grand marshal
For now, the question before Clovis is, how will the city honor Wittner? The Clovis Rodeo parade is April 27, but that may be too soon to get on her schedule. But she should be recognized in some fashion.
Wittner is a strong example of maximizing one’s personal ability, as Clovis Unified schools teach, and the hard work and success for which the city is known.
Clovis residents should all be proud of their homegrown hero, NASA Astronaut Jessica Wittner.
