Who Is Robb Kulin? NASA Astronaut Candidate First To Resign Since 1968

On Monday, NASA announced that one of its upcoming astronaut candidates, a member of the class of 2017, will drop halfway out of the 22nd two-year-long training program, something that no other candidate has done in last 50 years.

Robb Kulin, hailing from Anchorage, Alaska, was one of the 12 candidates selected for the program that trains astronauts through a series of projects and prepares them for real-world spaceflight assignments. He was selected from a chunk of more than 18,000 applicants after passing a series of rigorous tests and interviews but had to resign owing to "personal reasons," according to NASA public affairs office.

Kulin’s candidacy for the class was announced back in June 2017, when he oversaw flight reliability as a senior manager at SpaceX. He joined the Musk-owned spaceflight company in 2011 and worked on the first upgrade of the Falcon 9 rocket.

"My whole goal coming out of that, and I would say the team’s whole goal, was to make sure that the Falcon 9 was as reliable and successful as possible, for SpaceX’s commercial partners, but also of course very importantly for the crew that will fly on that vehicle,” he said at a press conference introducing the astronauts at the time, according to USA Today. "Hopefully, I will one day fly on a vehicle that has components that I got to design".

Before heading SpaceX’s Launch Chief Engineering group in California, Kulin, who is also a private pilot, worked as a commercial Alaskan fisherman and ice driller on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and Taylor Glaciers. He graduated as a mechanical engineer from the University of Denver and later went on to complete master’s in material science and a doctorate in engineering from the University of California, San Diego.

According to Robert Pearlman, the editor of space history website collectSPACE, he is the first astronaut candidate or ASCAN to drop out of the training program in the last half-century. The last such resignation came from chemist John Llewellyn, a member of the sixth group of trainees who dropped out in 1968.

As part of the program, the trainees — seven men (now six) and five women — study the systems onboard International Space Station and learn all essential spaceflight and spacewalking techniques required for missions to the station or beyond. The candidates also have to learn scuba diving to practice walking in microgravity environments.

While the former SpaceX manager has not shared an official statement detailing the exact cause of his resignation, which will come into effect Friday, Aug. 31, NASA has stated that the program will not find a replacement and continue with the remaining 11 candidates.

“When selecting an astronaut candidate class, we estimate needs within the astronaut corps based on available information at the time,” Brandi Dean from NASA public affairs office told Newsweek, “and account for the fact that we cannot fully predict attrition levels and other issues that might affect the number of astronauts available for assignment.”