NASA announced the creation of this astronaut group in November 2015 and accepted applications for astronaut hires from December 2015 through February 2016. A record number of applications - over 18,300 - were received. The final group of twelve selected candidates was publicly announced on June 7, 2017. The class was introduced at a press conference at the Johnson Space Center by U.S. Vice President
Mike Pence. The ages of the seven men and six women ranged from 29 to 42 at the time of announcement. The Group 22 astronaut candidates arrived at the
Johnson Space Center in
Houston for training in August 2017, and when their approximately two-year-long training program was complete in January 2020, they became available for future missions. The group earned their "Turtles" nickname after experiencing flooding from
Hurricane Harvey shortly after arriving at NASA. The name was chosen by
the preceding astronaut group, "The 8-Balls", according to NASA traditions. The first two members of this astronaut group to fly to space,
Raja Chari and
Kayla Barron on
SpaceX Crew-3, took a toy stuffed turtle as zero-g indicator to pay a tribute to their astronaut group.
Zena Cardman was the final member of this astronaut group to go to space on
SpaceX Crew-11. ==Group members==