As a former national team cyclist who'd fix her own bikes, and before that as a child helping out on her family's cattle farm, NASA trainee astronaut Christina Birch has plenty of experience working with her hands.

With America's sights now set on returning to the Moon—this time establishing long-term habitats—Birch is dreaming big: "If I could assist the mission in any way, by helping build something on the Moon, that would be super cool," she told AFP.

The 35-year-old is one of ten new recruits announced by the US space agency this week, the latest members of what it calls the "Artemis generation," named for the Artemis program to put American boots on lunar soil later this decade, and later on to Mars.

Selected from a competitive field of 12,000 applicants, their diverse profiles have been picked with the goal of accomplishing humankind's toughest exploration missions to date.

Among them are high-level scientists. Chris Williams, 38, is a medical physicist and assistant professor at Harvard, whose research focused on developing image guidance techniques for cancer treatments.