According to Virgin Galactic’s website, she has made it her mission to “use space as a laboratory to benefit humanity”.

Here’s what you need to know about the 35-year-old beautiful astronaut.

What is Kellie Gerardi’s background?

Born in February 1989 in Jupiter, Florida, Gerardi recalled her childhood in an interview with Jupiter magazine: “Growing up here, my bedroom window faced northeast and that stretch of sky over Cape Canaveral. I could literally watch space shuttle launches from my bedroom.”

While working in the cloakroom at the Explorers Club – an organisation promoting the scientific exploration of land, sea, air and space – Gerardi met astronaut Richard Garriott, who talked to her about opportunities in commercial space flight. This prompted Gerardi to pursue research in bioastronautics at the IIAS in Colorado after finishing her bachelor’s degree at NYU in 2011. She shared with the same publication: “As a new grad, to me it felt like: wow, that’s the Star Trek future I want to be a part of!”

What exactly does Kellie Gerardi do in space?

Gerardi began her career in 2012 at the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, where she worked as a lobbyist, media specialist and copywriter. She was a payload specialist on last November’s Galactic 05 research mission with Virgin Galactic. As Gerardi explained in an interview with Space.com, she had three experiments to perform on the Galactic 05 mission: one on how fluids behave in a low-gravity environment, one involving a wearable biomonitoring device, and a glucose monitoring experiment.

In addition to continuing bioastronautics research work for the IIAS, Gerardi has been mission operations lead for Colorado-based software company Palantir Technologies since November 2015, according to her LinkedIn. She also serves on the defence council of the Truman National Security Project and served on the executive board of the Explorers Club – she’s come a long way from her cloakroom assistant days!

Kellie Gerardi is a science communicator

Gerardi is the author of Not Necessarily Rocket Science: A Beginner’s Guide to Life in the Space Age (2020), as well as the children’s picture book series Luna Muna (2022-23), which astronaut Peggy Whitson read as a bedtime story from space in May 2023.

Gerardi is also a keen science communicator, with nearly 817,000 followers on Instagram and more than 795,000 on TikTok. She shares Reels and snaps of her life in space, as well as inspiring messages about female empowerment and motherhood, often including her daughter.

Per Virgin Galactic’s website, the 35-year-old believes that she’s “just an ordinary person and mother who embarked on an extraordinary journey”.

Kellie Gerardi is a wife and mother

Today, Gerrardi and Baumruk live in Jupiter, Florida, with their six-year-old daughter Delta Victoria, or Delta V for short.

Kellie Gerardi wants women to be themselves in space

Last November, Gerardi became the 677th human and 90th woman to travel to space. She said to Ergobaby, “It’s the honour of a lifetime to be one of them, but now the real work begins: helping to blow open the door for commercial human space flight – because the limiter has always been access and not aptitude.”

In an interview with Forbes in February, she said, “To think that I was one of the first 100 women in history to travel to space is mind-boggling.”