Hanna Harutyunyan, Armenia

For the 50th aspiring Martian feature, Joe sits down with Hanna Harutyunyan: robotics and mechatronics engineering student, researcher, and analog astronaut widely recognized as Armenia’s first analog astronaut.

Hanna has participated in analog missions at the Analog Astronaut Training Center in Poland and LunAres Research Station, supported the Austrian Space Forum’s AMADEE-24 Mars simulation in Armenia, and worked with the Swiss lunar analog program Asclepios to help train future astronaut crews.

In this conversation, we discuss growing up in Armenia with dreams of space exploration, learning to navigate rejection and isolation, why kindness may be one of the most important astronaut skills, how stress affects human cognition inside analog habitats, and what it feels like to help represent an entirely new generation of aspiring space explorers from Armenia.

But wait, there’s more! We also talk about EVA training, mental performance research, analog mission psychology, the future of Mars exploration, and why the future of space should belong to everyone.

Featuring