Declare that NASA astronauts get $66K beginning wage would not add up

[ad_1] Declare:

The typical beginning wage for a NASA astronaut in July 2025 was $66,026 per 12 months.

Ranking:

Ranking: Outdated

Context:

The declare was based mostly on the minimal potential beginning pay an astronaut might obtain in 2019, however even then astronauts might begin at increased pay. In 2024, all astronauts made greater than double that.

In July 2025, a publish about astronaut pay was shared broadly over X. The publish (archived), considered 3 million occasions in a number of days, claimed that the typical beginning wage for a NASA astronaut was $66,026 yearly. The declare was shared with a clip of an astronaut doing a spacewalk.

The very same declare was made in X posts that included the very same clip in April 2025 (archived), when it was considered 2.3 million occasions, and in January 2022 (archived), when it obtained over 22,000 likes.

(@Postinclips on X)

The declare was outdated, even when it was first shared in 2022. It additionally wasn't even completely precisely within the first place; the determine within the declare was simply one among a number of potential beginning salaries for its time.

The annual pay for all NASA astronauts in 2025 was $152,258 yearly, in response to NASA's web site. This was based mostly on the 2024 pay schedules and was nonetheless topic to a possible improve later within the 12 months.

The $66,000 wage determine may very well be discovered on an archived web page on the NASA web site from October 2019. That web page defined salaries for astronaut candidates on the time have been based mostly on the federal authorities's common schedule pay scale, which determines the pay for many civilian authorities staff. Astronaut candidates have been GS-11 to GS-14 on the pay scale, based mostly on the particular person's tutorial achievements and expertise, that means an astronaut's beginning wage may very well be as little as the G-11 beginning wage or as excessive because the G-14 beginning wage. An individual on the 2015 G-11 scale in Houston (it is unclear why the size was based mostly on the 12 months 2015), the place the Johnson House Heart is situated, would have began at $66,026 yearly. Somebody on the identical time and place on the G-14 scale would have began at $111,204 yearly.

Snopes despatched inquiries to NASA asking concerning the former pay scale, together with why the 2019 web page was nonetheless utilizing the pay scale from 2015, and the probability an astronaut would begin on the G-11 wage versus increased salaries, such because the G-14 wage, however didn't obtain a response earlier than publishing.

Beginning in 2021, astronauts have been not paid based mostly on the final schedule pay scale, in response to an archived web page on the NASA web site from October 2023. By that point, the beginning wage for a NASA astronaut candidate was $141,888 yearly .

In contrast to the final schedule pay construction, the brand new pay construction for NASA astronauts began everybody on the identical wage. "Although NASA continues to recruit astronauts with various abilities units and expertise ranges, all astronaut candidates start astronaut coaching on the identical degree; nobody has prior expertise as an astronaut, so all astronaut candidates begin on the identical price of pay," NASA wrote on the time.

"Astronaut candidates" are those that have been chosen to change into NASA astronauts, however who haven't but completed the coaching obligatory for area flight. All NASA astronauts begin as astronaut candidates. The 2023 NASA webpage defined that pay will increase have been tied to " particular, job-related milestones, akin to profitable completion of all astronaut coaching necessities." So any astronaut doing a spacewalk just like the one seen within the X posts can be paid greater than the beginning wage.

Sources: "Archive: Astronaut Choice - Incessantly Requested Questions." NASA, Web Archive, net.archive.org/net/20191018205154/astronauts.nasa.gov/content material/faq.htm. Accessed 18 Oct. 2019.

Dean, Brandi. "Archive: Turning into an Astronaut: Incessantly Requested Questions." NASA, Web Archive, 16 Jan. 2018, net.archive.org/net/20231002165809/www.nasa.gov/humans-in-space/becoming-an-astronaut-frequently-asked-questions/. Accessed 2 Oct. 2023.

---. "Turning into an Astronaut: Incessantly Requested Questions - NASA." NASA, 16 Jan. 2018, www.nasa.gov/humans-in-space/becoming-an-astronaut-frequently-asked-questions/. Accessed 1 Aug. 2025.

"Pay & Depart : Salaries & Wages - OPM.gov." U.S. Workplace of Personnel Administration, Jan. 2015, www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries-wages/salary-tables/15Tables/html/HOU.aspx. Accessed 1 Aug. 2025.