Army Major Becomes First Reservist to Receive Rare Astronaut Device

Kate Rubins was floating in zero gravity above Earth in 2020 when she decided to join the military.

Just over a year later, Rubins, now a biomedical researcher and astronaut, was promoted directly to major in the Army Reserve through training at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.

Now, three years into her army career, she joined the rare ranks of a handful of soldiers who earned the right to wear Army Aviation Badge with Astronaut Device.

On Thursday afternoon, Rubins attached the Army Air Corps badge using an astronaut device.

“I’m truly incredibly honored to receive this device,” Rubins said. “The significance for me is really that I can serve in the Army Reserve.”

Rubins, who is currently serving as a health services officer at the 75th Innovation Command at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, is the first Army reservist to receive the device.

On her second space mission since joining NASA in 2009, she embraced the challenges of becoming an Army officer. This is partly due to the incredibly focused, years-long preparation for her flight to the International Space Station.

“The idea that I would go from one mission to another has actually been incredibly rewarding,” Rubins said in a phone call with the media on Thursday.

This is probably the rarest device in the military. The device, originally called the Army Astronaut Badge, was created by the Army Chief of Staff in 1983, Army Times officials confirmed Friday.

Since its inception, only three other soldiers have been honored with the device: Col. Drew Morgan, who wears it on his Army space badge, and colonels, officials said. Anne McClain and Frank Rubio, who wear the device on their aviation badges.

These three men are also the only active-duty military personnel with this device.

McClain was the first soldier to receive the device during a ceremony Nov. 10, 2020, at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, officials told Army Times. Although she received the device then, she became eligible for it in 2018 after her space flight. to the International Space Station.

Morgan and Rubio met the device criteria in 2019 and 2022, respectively.

It is a 7/16-inch-long gold-colored device with a star emitting three contrails surrounded by an elliptical orbit, in accordance with Army Regulation 600-8-22.

To qualify to use the device, the Army requires a soldier to undergo astronaut training and reach an altitude of 62 miles or higher, passing the Karman Line, which is the boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and space.

Rubins, a native of Farmington, Connecticut, received his PhD in cancer biology from Stanford University School of Medicine. She did undergraduate research on HIV-1 integration at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies’ Infectious Diseases Laboratory, she said. official biography.

The major later led a team of 14 researchers studying viral diseases that mainly affected Central and Western Africa.

She spent 300 days in space on two flights in 2016 and 2020 and performed four spacewalks. Rubins was also the first person to sequence DNA in space.